ment if he had been removed long ago from a situation | rials of constant intoxication secured for the rest of which, but for the exertions of Mr. Bennet, we believe, the voyage. he would have held to this day.

The sick, from Mr. Bigge's report, appear to have | fared as badly as the sinful. Good water was scarce, proper persons to wait upon the patients could not be obtained; and so numerous were the complaints from this quarter, that the governor makes an order for the exclusion of all hospital grievances and complaints, except on one day in the month-dropsy swelling, how ever, fever burning, and ague shaking, in the mean time, without waiting for the arrangements of Governor Macquarrie, or consulting the Mollia tempora fandi.

In permitting individuals to distil their own grain, the government of Botany Bay appears to us to be quite right. It is impossible, in such a colony, to prevent unlawful distillation to a considerable extent; and it is as well to raise upon spirits (as something must be taxed) that slight duty which renders the contraband trade not worth following. Distillation, too, always insures a magazine against famine, by which New South Wales has more than once been severely visited. It opens a market for grain where markets are very distant, and where redundance and famine seem very often to succeed each other. The cheapness of spirits, to such working people as know how to use them with moderation, is a great blessing; and we doubt whether that moderation, after the first burst of ebriety, is not just as likely to be learnt in plenty, as in scarcity.

We were a little surprised at the scanty limits al. lowed to convicts for sleeping on board the transports. Mr. Bigge, (of whose sense and humanity we really have not the slightest doubt) states eighteen inches to be quite sufficient-twice the length of a small sheet of letter-paper. The printer's devil, who carries our works to the press, informs us, that the allowance to the demons of the type is double foolscap length, or twenty-four inches. The great city upholsterers generally consider six feet as barely sufficient for a person just rising in business, and assisting occasionally at official banquets.

Mrs. Fry's system is well spoken of by Mr. Bigge; and its useful effect in promoting order and decency among floating convicts fully admitted.

In a voyage to Botany Bay by Mr. Read, he states that, while the convict vessel lay at anchor, about to sail, a boat from shore reached the ship, and from it stepped a clerk of the Bank of England. The convicts felicitated themselves upon the acquisition of so gentlemanlike a companion; but it soon turned out that the visitant had no intention of making so long a voyage. Finding that they were not to have the pleasure of his company, the convicts very naturally thought of picking his pockets; the necessity of which professional measure was prevented by a speedy distribution of their contents. Forth from his bill-case, this votary of Plutus drew his nitid Newlands; all the forgers and utterers were mustered on deck; and to each of them was well and truly paid into his hand, a five pound note; less acceptable, perhaps, than if privately removed from the person, but still joyfully received. This was well intended on the part of the directors; but the consequences it is scarcely necessary to enumerate; a large stock of rum was immediately laid in from the circumambient slop boats; and the mate

We are sorry that it should have been imagined, from some of our late observations on prison discipline, that we meant to disparage the exertions of Mrs. Fry. For prisoners before trial, it is perfect; but where imprisonment is intended for punishment, and not for detention, it requires, as we have endeavoured to show, a very different system. The Prison Society (an excellent, honourable, and most useful institution of some of the best men in England,) have certainly, in their first numbers, fallen into the common mistake of supposing that the reformation of the culprit, and not the prevention of the crime, was the main object of imprisonment; and have, in consequence, taken some false views of the method of treating prisoners-the exposition of which, after the usual manner of flesh and blood, makes them a little angry. But, in objects of so high a nature, what matters who is right the only ques won is, what is right?

The following account of pastoral convicts is striking and picturesque :

I observed that a great many of the convicts in Van Diemen's Land wore jackets and trowsers of the kangaroo skin, and sometimes caps of the same material, which they obtain from the stock-keepers who are employed in the interior of the country. The labour of several of them differs, in this respect, from the convicts in New South Wales, and is rather personal than agricultural. Permission having been given, for the last five years, to the settlers to avail themselves of the ranges of open plains and valleys that lie on either side of the road leading from Austin's Ferry to Launceston, a distance of 120 miles, their flocks and herds have been committed to the care of convict shepherds and stock-keepers, who are sent to these cattle-ranges, distant sometimes 30 or 40 miles from their

masters' estates.

The boundaries of these tracts are described in the tickets

of occupation by which they are held, and which are made renewable every year, on payment of a fee to the lieuteuantthem, to attend to the flocks and cattle, and are supplied with governor's clerk. One or more convicts are stationed on wheat, tea, and sugar, at the monthly visits of the owner. They are allowed the use of a musket and a few cartridges to defend themselves against the natives; and they have also dogs, with which they hunt the kangaroos, whose fiesh they eat, and dispose of their skins to persons passing from Hobart Town to Launceston, in exchange for tea and sugar. Thus they obtain a plentiful supply of food and sometimes succeed in cultivating a few vegetables. Their habitations are made of turf and thatched, as the bark of the dwarf eucalyptus, or gum-trees of the plains, and the interior, in Van Diemen's Land, is not of sufficient expanse to form covering or shelter.' -Report, pp. 107, 108.

under the bark of the dwarf eucalyptus, and keeping A London thief, clothed in kangaroo's skins, lodged sheep, fourteen thousand miles from Piccadilly, with a crook bent into the shape of a picklock, is not an uninteresting picture; and an engraving of it might have a very salutary effect-provided no engraving were made of his convict master, to whom the sheep belong.

The Maroon Indians were hunted by dogs-the fugitive convicts are recovered by the natives.

The native blacks that inhabit the neighbourhood of Port Hunter and Port Stephens have become very active in retaking the fugitive convicts. They accompany the soldiers who are sent in pursuit, and, by the extraordinary strength ef sight they possess, improved by their daily exercise of it in pursuit of kangaroos and opossums, they can trace to a great distance, with wonderful accuracy, the impressions of the human foot. Nor are they afraid of meeting the fugitive convicts in the woods, when sent in their pursuit, without the soldiers; by their skill in throwing their long and pointed wooden darts, they wound and disable them, strip them of their clothes, ant bring them back as prisoners, by unknown roads and paths, to the Coal river.

They are rewarded for these enterprizes by presents of maize and blankets; and, notwithstanding the apprehensions of revenge from the convicts whom they bring back, they continue to live in Newcastle and its neighbourhood; but are observed to prefer the society of the soldiers to that of the convicts.'-Report, p. 117.

Of the convicts in New South Wales, Mr. Bigge found about eight or nine in an hundred to be persons of respectable character and conduct, though the evidence respecting them is not quite satisfactory. But the most striking and consolatory passage in the whole report is the following:

The marriages of the native-born youths with female convicts are very rare-a circumstance that is attributable to the general disinclination to early marriage that is observable amongst them, and partly to the abandoned and dissolute habits of the female convicts; bu chiefly to a sense of pride in the native-born youths, approaching to contempt for the vices and depravity of the convicts, even when manifested in the persons of thrir own parents.'-Report, p. 105.

Every thing is to be expected from these feelings. They convey to the mother-country the first proof that the foundations of a mighty empire are laid.

We were somewhat surprised to find Governor Macquarrie contending with Mr. Bigge, that it was no part of his, the governor's duty, to select and sepa rate the useless from the useful convicts, or to determine, except in particular cases, to whom they are to

128

be assigned. In other words, he wishes to effect the customary separation of salary and duty-the grand principle which appears to pervade all human institutions, and to be the most invincible of human abuses. Not only are church, king, and state, allured by this principle of vicarious labour, but the pot-boy has a lower pot-boy, who, for a small portion of his principal, arranges, with inexhaustible sedulity, the subdivided portions of drink, and, intensely perspiring, disperses, in bright pewter, the frothy elements of joy. There is a very awkward story of a severe flogging inflicted upon three freemen by Governor Macquarrie, without complaint to, or intervention of, any magistrate; a fact not denied by the governor, and for which no adequate apology, nor any thing approaching to an adequate apology, is offered. These Asiatic and Satrapical proceedings, however, we have reason to think, are exceedingly disrelished by London juries. The profits of having been unjustly flogged at Botany Bay (Scarlett for the plaintiff) is good property, and would fetch a very considerable sum at the auction mart. The governor, in many instances, appears to have confounded diversity of opinion upon particular measures, with systematic opposition to his govern ment, and to have treated as disaffected persons those whom, in favourite measures, he could not persuade by his arguments, nor influence by his example, and on points where every man has a right to judge for himself, and where authority has no legitimate right to interfere, much less to dictate.

To the charges confirmed by the statement of Mr. Bigge, Mr. Bennet adds, from the evidence collected by the gaol committee, that the fees in the governor's court, collected by the authority of the governor, are most exorbitant and oppressive; and that illegal taxes are collected under the sole authority of the governor. It has been made, by colonial regulations, a capital offence to steal the wild cattle; and, in 1816, three persons were convicted of stealing a wild bull, the property of our sovereign lord the king. Now, our sovereign lord the king (whatever be his other merits or demerits) is certainly a very good-natured man, and would be the first to lament that an unhappy convict was sentenced to death for killing one of his wild bulls on the other side of the world. The cases of Mr. Moore, and of William Stewart, as quoted by Mr. Bennet, are If they are answerable, they should very strong. be answered. The concluding letter to Mr. Stewart is, to us, the most decisive proof of the unfitness of Colonel Macquarrie for the situation in which he was placed. The ministry at home, after the authenticity of the letter was proved, should have seized upon the first decent pretext of recalling the governor, of thanking him, in the name of his sovereign, for his valuable services (not omitting his care of the wild bulls,) aud of dismissing him to half pay-and insignificance.

not perceive that any is imputed to this gentleman;
but he is negligent, expensive, arbitrary, ignorant, and
clearly deficient in abilities for the task committed to
his charge. It is our decided opinion, therefore, that
Mr. Bennet has rendered a valuable service to the
public, in attacking and exposing his conduet. As a
gentleman and an honest man, there is not the small-
est charge against the governor; but a gentleman and
a very honest man, may very easily ruin a very fine
colony. The colony itself, disencumbered of Colonel
Lachlan Macquarrie, will probably become a very fine
empire; but we can scarcely believe it is of any pre-
sent utility as a place of punishment. The history of
emancipated convicts, who have made a great deal of
money by their industry and their speculations, neces
sarily reaches this country, and prevents men who
are goaded by want, and hovering between vice and
virtue, from looking upon it as a place of suffering-
perhaps leads them to consider it as the land of hope
and refuge, to them unattainable, except by the com
mission of crime. And so they litt up their heads at
the bar, hoping to be transported-

'Stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum
Tendebantque manus, ripe ulteroris amore.'

It is not possible, in the present state of the law,
that these enticing histories of convict prosperity
should be prevented, by one uniform system of severi
ty exercised in New South Wales, upon all transported
persons. Such different degrees of guilt are included
under the term of convict, that it would violate every
feeling of humanity, and every principle of justice, to
deal out one measure of punishment to all. We strong-
ly suspect that this is the root of the evil. We want
new gradations of guilt to be established by law-new
names for those gradations-and a different measure
of good and evil treatment attached to those denomi-
nations. In this manner, the mere convict, the rogue
and convict, and the incorrigible convict, would expect,
upon their landing, to be treated with very different
degrees of severity. The first might be merely de-
tained in New South Wales without labour or coer-
cion; the second compelled, at all events, to work out
two-thirds of his time, without the possibility of re-
mission; and the third be destined at once for the
Coal River. If these consequences steadily followed
these gradations of conviction, they would soon be un-
derstood by the felonious world at home. At present,
the prosperity of the best convicts is considered to be
attainable by all; and transportation to another hemi-
sphere is looked upon as the renovation of fallen for-
tunes, and the passport to wealth and power.

Another circumstance, which destroys all idea of punishment in transportation to New South Wales, is the enormous expense which that settlement would occasion, if it really was made a place of punishment. He is turned over As to the trial by jury, we cannot agree with Mr. A little wicked tailor arrives, of no use to the archi Bennet, that it would be right to introduce it at pre-tectural projects of the governor. sent, for reasons we have given in a previous article, to a settler, who leases this sartorial Borgia his liberand which we see no reason for altering. The time of ty for five shillings per week, and allows him to steal course will come, when it would be in the highest de- and snip, what, when, and where he can. The excuse gree unjust and absurd to refuse to that settlement for all this mockery of law and justice is, that the exthe benefit of popular institutions. But they are too pense of his maintenance is saved to the government young, too few, and too deficient for such civilized at home. But the expense is not saved to the country machinery at present. I cannot come to serve upon at large. The nefarious needleman writes home that the jury-the waters of the Hawksbury are out, and I he is as comfortable as a finger in a thimble! that have a mile to swim-the kangaroos will break into though a fraction only of a humanity, he has several my corn-the convicts have robbed me-my little boy wives, and is filled every day with rum and kangaroo. has been bitten by an ornithorynchus paradoxus-I This, of course, is not lost upon the shop-board; and, have sent a man fifty miles with a sack of flour to buy for the saving of fifteen pence per day, the foundation a pair of breeches for the assizes, and he has not re- for many criminal tailors is laid. What is true of taiturned.' These are the excuses, which, in new colo- lors, is true of tinkers, and all other trades. The nies, always prevent trial by jury; and make it de- chances of escape from labour, and of manumission in sirable for the first half century of their existence, the Bay, we may depend upon it, are accurately re that they should live under the simplicity and conve ported, and perfectly understood in the flash-houses of nience of such modified despotism (we mean) as a St. Giles: and, while Earl Bathurst is full of jokes and British House of Commons, (always containing men joy, public morals are sapped to their foundation. as bold and honest as the member for Shrewsbury) will permit, in the governors of their distant colonies.

Such are the opinions formed of the conduct of Governor Macquarrie by Mr. Bigge. Not the slightest insinuation is made against the integrity of his character. Though almost every body else has a job, we do

* This practice is now resorted to.

GAME LAWS. (EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1823.)

again. We have got game this season as low as half-a. crown a brace (birds), and pheasant as low as 78. a brace. A Letter to the Chairman of the Committee of the House of It is so plentiful, there has been no end to spoiling it this Commons, on the Game Laws. By the Hon and Rev. Wil-season. It is so plentiful, it is of no use. In war time it is liam Herbert. Ridgway, 1823. worth having; then they fetched 78. and 88. a brace.'-Report, p. 33.

state, that it is absolutely necessary they should All the poulterers, too, even the most respectable, carry on this illegal traffic in the present state of the game laws; because their regular customers for poultry would infallibly leave any poulterer's shop from whence they could not be supplied with game.

ABOUT the time of the publication of this little phamphlet of Mr. Herbert, à committee of the House of Commons published a Report on the Game Laws, containing a great deal of very curious information respecting the sale of game, an epitome of which we shall now lay before our readers. The country higglers who collect poultry, gather up the game from the depots of the poachers, and transmit it in the same manner as poultry, and in the same packages, to the London poulterers, by whom it is dis.ributed to the public; and this traffic is carried on (as far as game is concerned) even from the distance of Scotland.The same business is carried on by the porters of stage coaches; and a great deal of game is sold clandestinely by lords of manors, or by gamekeepers, without the knowledge of lords of manors; and principally, as the evidence states, from Norfolk and Suffolk, the great schools of steel traps and spring guns. The supply of game, too, is proved to be quite as reg. ular as the supply of poultry; the number of hares-Would it be their interest to do so, considering the penaland partridges supplied rather exceeds that of pheasants; but any description of game may be had to any amount. Here is part of the evidence.

I have no doubt that it is the general wish at present of the trade not to deal in the article; but they are all, of course, compelled from their connections. If they cannot get game from one person, they can from another. 'Do you believe that poulterers are not to be found who would take out licenses, and would deal with those very they would have dealing as you would do? I think the persons, for the purposes of obtaining a greater profit than poulterers in general are a respectable set of men, and would not countenance such a thing; they feel now that they are driven into a corner; that there may be men who would countenance irregular proceedings, I have no doubt.

ty? No, I think not. The poulterers are perfectly well aware that they are committing a breach of the law at present.-Do you suppose that those persons, respectable as they are, who are now committing a breach of the law, tered? No, certainly not; at present it is so connected would not equally commit that breach if the law were alnow, that they were driven into a corner; what did you who commit those depredations, because of the constant demean by that? We are obliged to aid and abet those men mand for game, from different customers whom we supply with poultry.-Could you carry on your business as a poulterer, if you refused to supply game? By no means; because some of the first people in the land require it of me.' -Report, p. 15.

Can you at any time procure any quantity of game? I have no doubt of it.-If you were to receive almost an un-with their business that they cannot help it.-You said just Limited order, could you execute it? Yes, I would supply the whole city of London, any fixed day once a week, all the year through, so that every individual inhabitant should have game for his table.-Do you think you could procure a thousand pheasants? Yes; I would be bound to produce ten thousand a week.-You would be bound to provide every family in London with a dish of game? Yes; a partridge, or a pheasant, or a hare, or a grouse, or something or other. How would you set about doing it? I should, of course, request the persons with whom I am in the habit of dealing, to use their influence to bring me what they could by a certain day; I should speak to the dealers and the mail-guards, and coachmen, to produce a quantity; and I should send to my own connections in one or two manors where I have the privilege of selling for those gentlemen; and should send to Scotland to say, that every week the largest quantity they could produce was to be sent. Being but a petty salesman, I sell a very small quantity; but I have had about 4000 head direct from one man.-Can you state the quantity of game which has been sent to you during the year? No; I may say, perhaps, 10,000 head; mine is a limited trade; I speak comparatively to that of others; I only supply private families.'-Report, p. 20.

his bill of additional severities against poachers, When that worthy errorist, Mr. Bankes, brought in there was no man of sense and reflection who did not anticipate the following consequences of the measure.

Do you find that less game has been sold in consequence of the bill rendering it penal to sell game? Upon my word, it did not make the slightest difference in the world.- Not immediately after it was made? No; I do not think it made the slightest difference.-It did not make the slightest sensation? No, I never sold a bird less.-Was not there a resolution of the poulterers not to sell game? I was secretary to that committee.-What was the consequence of that resolution? A great deal of ill blood in the trade. One Poachers who go out at night cannot, of course, like gentleman who just left the room did not come into my regular tradesmen, proportion the supply to the de- neighbours sold it; and as we had people on the watch, ideas. I never had a head of game in my house; all my mand, but having once made a contract, they kili all who were ready to watch it into the houses, it came to this, they can; and hence it happens that the game market we were prepared to bring our actions against certain indis sometimes very much overstocked, and great quan-viduals, after sitting, perhaps, from three to four months tities of game either thrown away, or disposed of by every week, which we did at the Crown and Anchor in the Irish hawkers to the common people at very inferior Strand, but we did not proceed with our actions, to prevent ill blood in the trade. We regulariy met, and, as we conprices. ceived at the time, formed a committee of the most respectable of the trade. I was secretary of that committee. The game was sold in the city, in the vicinity of the Royal Exchange, cheaper than ever was known, because the people at our end of the town were afraid. I, as a point of honour, never had it in my house. I never had a head of game in my house that season.-What was the consequence? I lost my trade, and gave offence to a gentleman; a nobleman's steward, or butler, or cook, treated it as contumely; "Good God, what is the use of your running your head against the wall?"-You were obliged to begin the trade again? Yes, and sold more than ever.-Report, p. 18.

'Does it ever happen to you to be obliged to dispose of poultry at the same low prices you are obliged to dispose of game? It depends upon the weather; often, when there is a considerable quantity on hand, and owing to the weather, it will not keep till the following day, I am obliged to take any price that is offered; but we can always turn either poultry or game into some price or other; and if it was not for the Irish hawkers, hundreds and hundreds of heads of game would be spoiled and thrown away. It is out of the power of any person to conceive for one moment the quantity of game that is hawked in the strects. I have had opportunity more than other persons of knowing this; for I have sold, I may say, more game than any other person in the city; and we serve hawkers indiscriminately, persons who come and purchase probably six fowls or turkeys and geese, and they will buy heads of game with them.'-Report, p. 22.

Live birds are sent up as well as dead; eggs as well as birds. The price of pheasants' eggs last year was 8s. per dozen; of partridges' eggs, 2s. The price of hares was from 3s. to 3s. 6d. ; of partridges, from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. ; of pheasants, from 5s. to 5s. 6d. each, and sometimes as low as 18. 6d.

What have you given for game this year? It is very low indeed I am sick of it; I do not think I shall ever deal

of every person before the committee.
These consequences are confirmed by the evidence

All the evidence is very strong as to the fact, that dealing in game is not discreditable; that there are a great number of respectable persons, and, among the rest, the first poulterers in London, who buy game would never dream of purchasing any other article knowing it to have been illegally procured, but who procured by dishonesty.

Are there not, to your knowledge, a great many people in this town who deal in game, by buying or selling it, that would not on any account buy or sell stolen property?Certainly; there are many capital tradesmen, poulterers, who deal in game, that would have nothing to do with stolen

poultry, or his sheep, they are committing a crime against that man's property; but I think with respect to the game, they do not feel that they are doing any thing which is wrong; but think they have commit ted no crime when they have done the thing, and their only anxiety is to escape detection.' In addition, Mr. Stafford states that he remembers not one single conviction under Mr. Bankes's Act against buying game; and not one conviction for buying or selling game within the last year has been made at Bow Street.

property; and yet I do not think there is a poulterer's shop | break into a house, or to rob a person, or to steal his in London where they could not get game, if they wanted it.-Do you think any discredit attaches to any man in this town for buying or selling game? I think none at all: and I do not think that the men to whom I have just referred, would have any thing to do with stolen goods.-Would it not, in the opinion of the inhabitants of London, be considered a very different thing dealing in stolen game, or stolen poultry? Certainly. The one would be considered disgraceful, and the other not? Certainly; they think nothing of dealing in game; and the farmers in the country will not give information; they will have a hare or two of the very men who work for them, and they are afraid to give us information.-Report, p. 31.

The inferences from these facts are exactly as we predicted, and as every man of common sense must The evidence of Daniel Bishop, one of the Bow have predicted-that to prevent the sale of game is ab street officers, who has been a good deal employed in solutely impossible. If game is plentiful, and cannot the apprehension of poachers, is curious and impor- be obtained at any lawful market, an illicit trade will tant, as it shows the enormous extent of the evil, and be established, which it is utterly impossible to prethe ferocious spirit which the game laws engender in vent by any increased severity of the laws. There the common people. The poachers,' he says, never was a more striking illustration of the necessity came sixteen miles. The whole of the village from of attending to public opinion in all penal enactments. which they were taken were poachers; the constable Mr. Bankes (a perfect representation of all the ordina of the village, and the shoemaker, and other inhabi- ry notions about forcing mankind by pains and penaltants of the village. I fetched one man twenty-two ties) took the floor. To buy a partridge (though still miles. There was the son of a respectable gardener; considered as inferior to murder) was visited with the one of these was a sawyer, and another a baker, who very heaviest infliction of the law; and yet, though kept a good shop there. If the village had been game is sold as openly in London as apples and oranalarmed, we should have had some mischief; but we ges, though three years have elapsed since this legiwere all prepared with fire-arms. If poachers have a slative mistake, the officers can hardly recollect a spite with the gamekeeper, that would induce them single instance where the information has been laid, to go out in numbers to resist him. This party I or the penalty levied: and why? because every man's speak of had something in their hats to distinguish feelings and every man's understanding tell him, that them. They take a delight in setting to with the it is a most absurd and ridiculous tyranny to prevent gamekeepers; and talk it over afterwards how they one man, who has more game than he wants, from exserved so and so. They fought with the butt-ends of changing it with another man, who has more money their guns at Lord Howe's; they beat the game- than he wants-because magistrates will not (if they keepers shockingly.' 'Does it occur to you (Bishop can avoid it) inflict such absurd penalties-because is asked) to have had more applications, and to have even common informers know enough of the honest detected more persons this season than in any former indignation of mankind, and are too well aware of the one? Yes: think within four months there have coldness of pump and pond to act under the bill of the been twenty-one transported that I have been at the Lycurgus of Corfe Castle. taking of, and through one man turning evidence in each case, and without that they could not have been identified; the gamekeepers could not, or would not, identify them. The poachers go to the public house and spend their money; if they have a good night's work, they will go and get drunk with the money. The gangs are connected together at different public houses, just like a club at a public house; they are sworn together. If the keeper took one of them, they would go and attack him for so doing.'

(

The plan now proposed is, to undersell the poacher, which may be successful or unsuccessful; but the threat is, if you attempt this plan there will be no game-and if there is no game there will be no country gentlemen. We deny every part of this enthymeme-the last proposition as well as the first. We really cannot believe that all our rural mansions would be deserted, although no game was to be found in their neighbourhood. Some come into the country for health, some for quiet, for agriculture, for economy, Mr. Stafford, chief clerk of Bow Street, says, All from attachment to family estates, from love of rethe offences against the game laws which are of an tirement, from the necessity of keeping up provincial atrocious description I think are generally reported to interests, and from a vast variety of causes. Patridg the public office in Bow Street, more especially in ca-es and pheasants, though they form nine-tenths of huses where the keepers have either been killed, or dan-man motives, still leave a small residue, which may gerously wounded, and the assistance of an officer be classed under some other head. Neither is a great from Bow Street is required. The applications have proportion of those whom the love of shooting brings been much more numerous of late years than they into the country of the smallest value or importance were formerly. Some of them have been cases of to the country. A colonel of the Guards, the second murder; but I do not think many have amounted to son just entered at Oxford, three diners out from murder. There are many instances in which keepers Piccadilly-Major Rock, Lord John, Lord Charles, have been very ill treated-they have been wounded, the colonel of the regiment quartered at the neigh skulls have been fractured, and bones broken; and bouring town, two Irish peers, and a German baron ; they have been shot at. A man takes an hare, or a-if all this honourable company proceed with fustian pheasant, with a very different feeling from that with jackets, dog-whistles, and chemical inventions, to a which he would take a pigeon or a fowl out of a farm-solemn destruction of pheasants, how is the country yard. The number of persons that assembled togeth- benefited by their presence? or how would earth, air, er is more for the purpose of protecting themselves or sea, be injured by their annihilation? There are against those that may apprehend them, than from any idea that they are actually committing depredation upon the property of another person; they do not consider it as property. I think there is a sense of morality and a distinction of crime existing in the men's minds, although they are mistaken about it. Men feel that if they go in a great body together, to

*It is only of late years that men have been transported for shooting at night. There are instances of men who have been transported at the Sessions for night poaching, who made no resistance at all when taken; but then their characters as old poachers weighed against them-characters estimated probably by the very lords of manors who had lost their game. This disgraceful law is the occasion of all the murders committed for game.

certainly many valuable men brought into the country by a love of shooting, who, coming there for that pur pose, are useful for many better purposes; but a vast multitude of shooters are of no more service to the country than the ramrod which condenses the charge, or the barrel which contains it. We do not deny that the annihilation of the game laws would thin the aris tocratical population of the country; but it would not thin that population so much as is contended; and the loss of many of the persons so banished would be a good rather than a misfortune. At all events, we cannot at all comprehend the policy of alluring the better classes of society into the country, by the tempta tion of petty tyranny and injustice, or of monopoly in sports. How absurd it would be to offer to the higher