^y^m,' 
 
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 LI E) R.AR.Y 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UN IVLR51TY 
 
 Of ILLINOIS
 
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 THE GAME LAWS, 
 
 SPEECH OF Mr. P. A. TAYF.OR 
 
 IN THE 
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS, 
 
 MAPtCH 2nd, 1.880. 
 
 REVISED FRO 31 THE EEEOE TEE'S NOTES. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE ANTI-GAME LAW LEAGUE, 
 
 9, BucKI^'GllAM Stueet, Strand.
 
 n-ATKULO'.V AXD SOKS LIMITED. T.OXDOV TTALL, LONDON; 
 A^•D -10. rARLIAMEXT STREET, V/ESTMIXSTER.
 
 HOUSE OF COMMONS, March 2nd, 1880. 
 
 THE GAME LAWS. 
 
 Mr. P. A. Taylor, wlio was received witli cheers, said: Nine years 
 Mr. Speaker, I am sure the House will acquit me of having ^^•y*^°^'''^ 
 unduly pressed the question of the Game Laws upon their 
 attention, considering the immense importance which, in my 
 opinion, attaches to them. I observe, somewhat to my sur- 
 prise, that it is as much as nine years since I last introduced 
 the question of their abolition. Finding on that occasion 
 that I met with but small, and that not increasing support, 
 while there also appeared but little desire to discuss the 
 question at all, I felt that I should be doing less good by 
 wearying the House by an annual motion on the subject than 
 by endeavouring to act on public opinion in the country, and 
 I accordingly at once assisted in the formation of the Anti- 
 Grame Law League. I cannot claim full credit for not 
 bringing on the question during the present Parliament, 
 seeing that for the last two or three Sessions I have only 
 been prevented from doing so by ill-fortune at the ballot. 
 I am particularly glad, however, in having the opportunity 
 of doing so now — first, because it is extremely desirable that 
 in this last Session of an expiring Parliament the farmers, as 
 well as other classes interested in the question, should have 
 the opportunity, previously to the Grenerai Election, of seeing 
 by the division list what course is taken by their repre- 
 sentatives, and especially by the farmers' friends in this 
 House — real or assumed. There is another reason why it is 
 especially important that the question should now be dis-
 
 Agricultural 
 
 doprcssiou. 
 
 Chambers of 
 Ai^riculture. 
 
 "What tenant 
 farmers say. 
 
 cussed, seeing that for the last two or three years the shadow 
 of agricultural distress has again come upon all parts of the 
 country. We hear on every side of bankrupt farmers, of 
 lowered production, and of unsatisfactory prices, and it seems 
 to me that it would be desirable that we should have an 
 opportunity of discussing in this House whether this question 
 which I have to introduce to your notice to-night, that of the 
 Game Laws, is or is not an important element to be con- 
 sidered in the question of agricultural distress. I am not 
 going at present to assert that the Game Laws are one of the 
 causes. of agricultural distress. What I propose to do is to 
 discuss whether the Game Laws may not under certain 
 circumstances be a potential element in agricultural distress. 
 I will afterwards — if the question be settled in the affirm- 
 ative — proceed to discuss the extent of their influence at the 
 present time. Now I must admit that the farmers, 
 generally speaking, so far as their views may be gathered 
 from Chambers of Agriculture and other similar associations, 
 do not seem to make a very strong point of the Game Laws 
 in respect of agricultural distress. Perhaps that msij partly 
 l)roceGd from what my hon. friend the member for South 
 Norfolk (Mr. C, S. Bead) thought so important in the posi- 
 tion of these agricultural associations, that it was quite 
 unnecessary for farmers to form themselves into independent 
 bodies and farmers' alliances, viz. : — that in this agricultural 
 discussion they had the enormous advantage of being under 
 the presidency and influence of the local landed proprietor, 
 I have certainly observed that where the farmers appear to 
 be more free from these shackles of that powerful class 
 interest, that they have spoken out with considerably more 
 force, both with regard to the Land Laws and the Game 
 Laws. I will, however, first proceed, with the permission 
 of the House, to give a few reasons why I believe the 
 Game Laws are a very active element in the question of 
 agricultural distress. 
 
 I will first call into the witness box my hon. friend the 
 member for South Norfolk, who, on opposing my motion on 
 this subject in the year 1871, declared— 
 
 -^^\ 
 ^.""/
 
 " That the landlord might let a farm at a high rent, eat the tenant 
 up with game, and ruin him, and yet be sure of every sixpence of his 
 rent." 
 
 I take it there is a potentiality in that statement very serious 
 
 for the farmers' interests. Another rather distinguished 
 
 tenant farmer, Mr. J. Shepheard, who gave evidence before 
 
 the Committee in 1873, declared that — 
 
 " Landlords have it in their power to ruin a tenant simply by a little 
 negligence in resj^ect to game." 
 
 Happy farmers ! If they have a negligent landlord they 
 
 may easily he ruined, and if they have a malicious one they 
 
 are pretty sure to be. Again, the hon. member for South 
 
 Norfolk says : — 
 
 " In a great number of cases of insolvent farmers in Norfolk, their 
 ultimate ruin is attributable to the over-preservation of game." 
 
 I think such evidence, on such authority, is amply suffi- 
 cient to show that there is at least a potentiality tending to 
 produce agricultural distress in this question of the Grame 
 Laws, but I will, with the permission of the House, add to 
 this certain evidence which has lately been laid before the 
 country through the newspaper press. Since this question of 
 agricultural distress has been raised many organs of \3opular 
 opinion throughout the country have sent Special Commis- 
 sioners down to inquire into the subject, and I will read two 
 or three lines from a letter of the Special Commissioner of the 
 Dailf/ Neivs, who was sent to the county in which I now livo 
 (Sussex). He says, dating from East Grinstead : — 
 
 "It is principally of hares and rabbits that the greal est complaint Evidence of 
 is made, and by many farmers these latter are classed as vermin, the the Press, 
 damage which they commit being, where they are allowed to accumulate, 
 almost beyond measure, and tlieir presence being altogether incom- 
 I)atible with even decent cultivation. But it is not the rabbits and hares 
 only which are so annoying, for if the winged game do not of them- 
 selves commit any very serious injury, the keeping of them harbours 
 rats, and Avhcrever pheasants are fed, thero, or else in the very near 
 neighbourhood, will be found a colony of rats. The destruction of 
 these pests is made the more difficult by the thickness and frequency 
 of the cover afforded by the hedgerows, and this again is a cause of 
 further complaint, besides the fact that the sporting landlord does not 
 deem the damage committed by rats to be worthy of acknowledgment 
 or compensation. The inditlerent cultivation of the farms in this 
 uei^ihbourhood I have heard generally attributed to the preservation of
 
 6 
 
 I will now trouble the House with a few lines of extract 
 from a very important letter addressed by a land agent to the 
 Land Agents^ Record, which is, I believe, a valuable organ 
 for all persons connected with the purchase or transfer of 
 land. I am not permitted to give the House this gentle- 
 man's name, but I may say he is an agent in large practice 
 in the Midland counties, and has had many years' experience. 
 He says : — 
 
 " The relations of landlord and tenant at the present time are 
 peculiarly interesting. Never within living memory have such a 
 number of notices to quit been given by tenant farmers. The chief re- 
 forms required are the following : a very substantial reduction of rents ; 
 the introduction of liberal covenants, aud freedom from game and 
 rabbits. Many landlords would prefer making larger reductions in 
 rent to giving up the game, but if they are wise they will not retain 
 such a source of annoyance and heart-burning in their midst. No one 
 buc those who have suffered from game aud rabbits know the mischief 
 and loss they inflict, or the angry feelings they daily arouse. To say 
 that thousands have been ruined by over-preservation within living 
 memory is to state a simple fact that cannot be denied." 
 
 I am not without hope that this view of the case may not now 
 be without interest for the landlords themselves, seeing that 
 the depression amongst the cultivators of the land has greatly 
 diminished the demand for farms, while for those which con- 
 tinue occupied, greatly reduced rents have to be accepted. 
 
 " One great landlord," says the Commissioner of the Norfolk News, 
 " has now 5,000 acres on his hands ; in every case game is the cause. 
 An estate of G,500 acres, of which 4,000 acres are on the landlord's 
 hands, was lately put up for sale without finding a purchaser. Its prime 
 element of value was that ' 21,000 head of game had been killed on it 
 during the year.' It is now come to this That the country will be 
 uncultivated, or the head of game must be greatly diminished." 
 
 I take it, sir, that I have now made good my first point, that 
 the G-ame Laws are potentially, at any rate, a question of 
 enormous importance in the discussion of the causes of agri- 
 cultural distress. 
 What are the But now what are these Game Laws that we are met to 
 aws discuss ? A number of gentlemen in this House speak of 
 them as though they are very rational and reasonable laws, 
 and as though if they did not exist now we should have to 
 do our best to create them at the earliest possible opportunity. 
 That is not my view, and I will venture to give the House 
 
 k
 
 my explanation of wliat I understand them to be. They are 
 laws which give a sanction to the old feudal principle of class 
 privilege in regard to wild anim.als, permitting them to be 
 used for the sport of one class. Of course their effect is not 
 in any way altered because the feudal is not the only principle 
 now, and because the Plutocracy has come in to share the 
 privilege of the landed interest. I am not aware that the 
 new landlords are likely to be any more careful of the interests 
 of the farmers, or of the labourers, than the feudal land- 
 lords were in old times. Blackstone says, and I cannot do 
 better than quote his words : — 
 
 " From this root (the Forest Laws) is sprung a bastard slip known by 
 the name of the Game Law ; both ahke were founded upon the same 
 unreasonable notions of property in wild creatures, and both were 
 productive of the same tyranny to the commons." 
 
 But the matter is worse than this : these wild animals belong 
 
 to the community, they belong to the people of the country. 
 
 Blackstone again upon this point says : 
 
 " It is indisputable that the wild denizens of the field, marsh, and 
 forest, known to lawyers under the name Ferce, naturcB, are the common 
 property of men, be their degree what it may." 
 
 The wild lands of the country, and the wild animals of the Wilr! aniDvI; 
 
 country, belong alike to the whole of the community, and if thoTom-^ 
 
 legislated for, can only be justly legislated for in the interests munity. 
 
 of the whole community. The peasant has just as much 
 
 right as the duke to hunt and kill and eat the wild animals 
 
 of the country, always provided he does no damage to the 
 
 land on which they are killed. 
 
 I perceive that this doctrine sounds somewhat strangely in 
 the ears of honourable gentlemen, but it is really a principle 
 universally recognised, except where our ideas are mystified 
 by theories about game and sport. 1 noticed, a few weeks ago 
 a very sensible letter to the TimeSj written by Mr. Deacon^ 
 from Loughton, Epping Forest, in which, complaining of the 
 wholesale destruction of small birds, and their consequent 
 scarcity, he says : — 
 
 " Now, Sir, I hold that, morally, these larks were not the exclusive 
 property of those who killed them. Wild birds are common property, 
 and if this is not already clear in the eyes of the law, I think we ought 
 not to rest until an amendment of the Wild Birds Act places it beyond 
 ail doubt for the future."
 
 8 
 
 But then this leads me to a more serious charge, and I 
 declare that in my opinion I do not in the least exaggerate 
 when I say that the Grame Laws are a permanent statutory 
 violation of the common law of the land^ as they are of 
 common justice and of common h.onest3^ (Cheers.) They 
 enable the landlord to say to the farmer, " There island which 
 I let you at a certain rent under certain covenants, but 
 between the lines you must read this — that when you have 
 your stock, your cattle, your bullocks, and your sheep, or 
 wliatever else you may choose, on the land — that then another 
 stock is to come upon it in indefinite quantities at my 
 pleasure, and the hares and rabbits, vermin to the farmers, 
 shall be placed on the land as I choose ; and that there shall 
 be only this peculiarity in this kind of property, that you 
 shall pay for them while they remain mine " — (cheers and 
 laughter) — while to the labourer the landlord says much, the 
 same as his game-preserving predecessors said 800 years ago, 
 when they made the New Forest, "Our chief pleasure in life 
 is sport, and whatever it may cost to the country, or to you, 
 v/e will maintain our privilege by our dominating power in 
 the Legislature.'* (Cheers and laughter.) What the game- 
 preserver of the present day does say to his labourer I will 
 describe in words of more authority than mine — in the words 
 of a landlord who is not ashamed to express sympathy for 
 the peasant, and who, thougb a lover of sport, has no sym- 
 pathy for the battue. The Marquis of Ailesbury, at his late 
 rent audit at Savernake, thus describes the relations of the 
 peasant to the game-preserver : — 
 
 Opinion of the " He comes liome to his cottage, and there is hardly enough to make 
 Marquis of a dinner for his wife and children ; over the next hedge are a lot of 
 Ailesbury. half-tamed pheasants, and the temptation is too much for the hungiy 
 man, a"nd he commits an offence which those wicked laws constitute a 
 crime, for which ho is to be sent to prison. How can any just man 
 attempt to defend such laws ? He did not often sit on a 'bench of 
 magistrates, but whenever he had done so, and poaching cases had come 
 before him, he had always treated them with the utmost leniency pos- 
 sible, because he felt the glaring injustice of the laws he was compelled 
 to administer." (Hear, hear.) 
 
 Such, then, is our Game Law code ; I should describe it 
 by a word not usually agreeable to the ears of members of
 
 9 
 
 this House — by the' ugly name of confiscation. For my Confiscation 
 part, I see no reason why that term should not be applic- '"^^^ Socialism. 
 able, because it is not the property of the rich that is so 
 dealt with. Nor can it fairly be objected that this form of 
 confiscation is legalised by statute. Many an act of confis- 
 cation has been sanctioned by the law. Let me give an 
 illustration. There are numerous schemes for land-law 
 reform floating rather vaguely through the country ; amongst 
 them is a plan greatly in favour with large classes of the 
 community for what is called nationalization of the land—i.e.j 
 that the people should resume the land — that there should 
 be, in fact, no absolute fee simple property in land. Well, 
 now, I say that if that proposal were carried into effect with- 
 out compensation to the existing owners, it would be an act 
 of injustice and confiscation as great, perhaps, as has ever been 
 perpetrated in the history of the world ; but I cannot admit 
 that it is any better when the property of the poor is taken 
 for the benefit of the rich. This confiscation of the game 
 is a sort of Socialism turned topsy-turvj^, and not im- 
 proved in the process. I am no Socialist, but I would 
 rather be a Socialist than a game-preserver. Lef us see 
 wherein the distinction consists. The Socialist would by a 
 system of artificial legislation take from the wealthy for 
 the supposed advantage of the poor ; under your Grame Law 
 system, you, by equally artificial legislation, take from the 
 whole community, and especially from the very poor, in 
 order to minister to the amusement and gratify the love of 
 sport of the wealthy few. And this Game Law code of Game Laws 
 yours is in severity and injustice at this time unparalleled ^j^^g^ 
 amongst civilized communities. There was a time when 
 France and Germany equalled, if not surpassed, us in this 
 bad pre-eminence, but 1789 swept away the French, and 1848 
 the German code. I remember a German friend telling me 
 that, in his youth, he had seen the wild boars issue from the 
 neighbouring forest, ravaging and ruining his father's little 
 property, whilst they dared not raise a hand against them. 
 This is no bad parallel to some instances that might be found 
 in this country, of small inclosures surrounded by preserved
 
 10 
 
 estates, though the bores are hares and rabbits. It has been 
 said that, since 1848, the Game Laws in Germany have been 
 renewed ; this is far from the truth. Some slight reaction I 
 believe there has been, but the existing laws bear no 
 resemblance to those which it required a revolution to re- 
 move. In respect to France, it is well recognised that their 
 barbarous Game Laws were not without effect in causing the 
 revolution of 1789, and in embittering the feelings of the 
 people against their feudal lords. Arthur Young, writing 
 about a century ago, thus describes the face of France : — 
 
 "The sign of a Grand Seigneur being landlord are wastes, landes, 
 deserts, and ling. Go to his residence, you will find it in the middle 
 of a forest peopled with deer. Oh, if I were legislator of France for 
 one day, I would make these lords skip again." 
 
 With sad celerity those unhappy game preservers had to 
 skip from game preserve to guillotine. 
 
 Foreign Gatao I am aware that it is commonly said that all countries have 
 aws. their Game Laws like ourselves, and a blue-book was issued 
 
 some years ago containing the reports, chiefly I believe from 
 our consuls abroad, of the Game Laws existing in the various 
 countries in which they were residing. I shall not trouble 
 the House with any details on this part of the subject, but 
 shall content myself with saying that I believe any one 
 reading those reports with unprejudiced discrimination will 
 come to the conclusion that oar Game Law code is un- 
 paralleled in the world for its severity and injustice. For 
 it must be borne in mind that all the surroundmg elements 
 have to be taken into consideration. It is of little use to 
 give merely a schedule of the existing Acts upon the subject 
 in the different countries : we have to consider also whether 
 they are more or less obsolete, or in active operation^ and 
 not less the area of the country, cultivated or wild, the com- 
 parative population, with many other parallel considerations. 
 
 America. But I must not forget America — my hon. friend the mem- 
 
 ber for South Norfolk (Mr. Clare Eead) I see has 
 been informing his constituents that they have Game Laws 
 in America. For this and similar observations I have seen 
 my hon. friends, the members for South Norfolk and South
 
 11 
 
 Leicester (Mr. Pell), likened to the " Innocents Abroad." I 
 cannot applaud this as an appropriate joke; to me it seems 
 rather that they placed far too much reliance on our innocence 
 at home. (Laughter.) But doubtless my hon. friend will 
 give us presently some strong corroborative evidence of the 
 survival of feudal privilege in Eepublican America. He 
 will produce a list, no doubt, of the farmers imprisoned and 
 subjected to hard labour for snaring a rabbit just outside 
 their boundaries. He will tell us of the number of labourers 
 condemned to penal servitude — that we may compare them 
 with the 10,659 convictions for offences under our Game 
 Laws in the last return ! But seriously I must assure my 
 hon. friend that he is under an entire delusion upon this 
 matter. All such laws in the United States are State and 
 not Imperial laws, and it may seem somewhat bold to 
 answer for them all, but I will venture to give that 
 challenge to my hon. friend, and to assert, without fear 
 of disproof, that there is not a Grame Law in existence 
 from one end to the other of the United States — I mean, of 
 course, in the sense in which we speak hereof Game Laws, or in 
 which alone the term has any meaning. They have in 
 America laws for the protection of wild animals, as indeed 
 w^e have here, quite irrespective of our Game Laws, and they 
 protect chiefly by close breeding time the whole of the ferce 
 naturce of their country, in the interests alike of science and 
 the picturesque. But these are not Game Laws, and being 
 in harmony with the sentiments of the population, although 
 the penalties in some of the States are very heavy, twenty- 
 five doUars for the destruction of a sparrow, they excite no 
 ill-feeling, as convictions are practically unknown. When 
 the late lamented Mr. Motley was ambassador to this country, 
 at a time when I was gathering information on this subject, 
 I was fortunate in procuring from liiiu a letter, a, few lines 
 from which, with the permission of the House, I will read. 
 After describing the existing laws for the protection of wild 
 animals in America, he goes on to say : — 
 
 " Practically, however, this legislation is in the interest, not of an 
 aristocratic class — for there ia uoue in the United States — but of the
 
 12 
 
 farmers and labourers, who own the land, and wlio do not object to 
 its being shot over, except when the trespasser by so doing damages 
 growing or standing crops. Our Game Laws are not aristocratic, but 
 democratic or scientific." 
 
 My hon. friend the member for South Norfolk appears 
 not to be entirely satisfied with the demeanour of the lower 
 order of Americans. He thinks they are too independent 
 and not respectful enough. There is no question that the 
 perennial virtue of '* booing and booing" made classical by 
 Sir Pertinax MacSycophant is an amiable one, and one 
 which appears to be very consonant with the British Con- 
 stitution. 
 
 !N^o doubt the American working- classes would be more 
 agreeable to English travellers if they had more of it. But 
 what then ? My hon. friend is too generous, because 
 Americans do not possess every virtue by which we are 
 distinguished to deny them others to which they may lay 
 claim, amongst v/hich I would venture to suggest to my hon. 
 friend is a high self-respect, national and individual, which 
 would make it impossible for any power in the world to 
 subject them for one clay to our Game Laws. (Cheers.) I 
 can tell my hon. friend and hon. gentlemen opposite that 
 amongst the things which astonish educated Americans when 
 they come here — for many of them have told me so them- 
 selves — is the theory and practice of our Grame Laws. They 
 cannot understand that there should be a class in England 
 that seeks to maintain them, and, worse still, a population 
 that will endure them. (Cheers.) That to them is one of 
 the most astounding things they meet with on this side of 
 the Atlantic. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) 
 
 As regards the question of the extent of this traffic in game 
 I had a curious illustration in a circular sent me the other 
 day. It appears that large profits are made by the letting of 
 land for game, and this circular comes from a shooting agency 
 in Fleet Street. I am told that there are others, and that 
 this gentleman is by no means one of the largest, yet he has 
 for patrons two dukes, six earls, four lords, ten baronets, 
 plenty of esquires — and all Scotch proprietors. The shooting 
 lie ofiers amounts to nearly a million scjuare acres sacrificed
 
 15 
 
 to game ; some of the conditions of which he speaks in regard 
 
 to the various properties are instructive and amusing. Mr. 
 
 So-and-so — 
 
 " Will send his list post free to a carefully selected list of gentlemen, 
 numbering several thousands, and embracing most of the aristocracy, 
 the members of the House of Commons, and the leading professional 
 and mercantile men over the kingdom." 
 
 These are the notes in which he describes the various pro- 
 perties he has to let : — 
 
 (No. 1.) " Securely fenced off from sheep.'' 
 
 (No. 2.) ^' Facilities would be afforded by the proprietor for gradually 
 removing the present sheep stock." (Cheers). 
 
 (No. 3.) " Episcopal church on the property, where a clergyman 
 gener.illy officiates — during the sportiug months." (Cheers and 
 laughter.) 
 
 (No. 4.) *' The forest is amply stocked with deer, having been cleared Deer v. Sheep 
 of sheep for 40 years. It is stipulated that no sheep shall be kept on 
 the ground by the lessee. The proprietor reserves power to de-itroy 
 hares and rabbits for the protection — (cheers from the Ministerial 
 benches) — yes, for the protection of his young plantations." (Loud 
 cheers and laughter.) 
 
 Yes, of course, he would destroy the hares and rabbits to 
 
 protect his young plantations. If he were as ready to destroy 
 
 them to protect the crops of his farmers, hon. gentlemen 
 
 opposite would have more right to cheer. 
 
 (No. 5.) " The land as a whole would form an excellent deer forest 
 beiDg in the immediate neighbourhood of lower cleared land." 
 
 Oh, happy farmers ! who enjoy the lower cleared lands 
 where this deer forest is to be created. 
 
 (No. 6.) " No keepers requked, as estate is surrounded by carefully 
 preserved lands." 
 
 Does it not strike hon. members that this is one of the 
 most remarkable illustrations that could possibly be made by 
 the statement that in politics, as in other things, extremes 
 meet? 
 
 Here we have in this little island of ours, from the The Red 
 effects of what you may call over-civilization, from the enor- ^'^*^^^^^- 
 mous accumulation of wealth, from our manufactures, from 
 the monopoly of land, and from various other things, pre- 
 cisely those evils reproduced that hitherto have only been 
 supposed to exist in the wildest and most desolate regions^ 
 and amongst the mosc savage of barbarians. When we see
 
 1 1- 
 
 at'ccimts of tho Kod Indian driven back by the xinglo-Saxon 
 in America — back from the lands that his forefathers owned, 
 back and still farther back — we pity him, for it is all that we 
 can do. We recognise as a fatality of history that the savage 
 must pass away before the Anglo-Saxon and civilization. 
 Agriculture has to be spread ; cities have to be founded; arts 
 and sciences follow in their wake ; and how can the Red 
 In dian live with them ? He requires thousands and tens of 
 thousands of acres of prairie for his buffaloes to roam ; he 
 needs a trackless forest, for the wild animals on which he lives 
 and by whose skin he is clothed ; he requires for his own wants 
 what would provide for perhaps ten thousand men, and so 
 ho must pass from the world. But what shall we say when 
 we come to our own little island swarming with humanity as 
 ants swarm in an ant hill, and find that here we have a 
 system which is incompatible with the existence of the Hed 
 Indian in America actually growing up on our own shores ? 
 (Cheers.) Estates, parishes, divisions — yes, even counties 
 in Scotland — are being sacrificed to this passion. Tens of 
 thousands of acres which would at least grow sheep, and in 
 some cases, such as the well-known case of Grlen Taner, 
 valleys well fitted for agriculture, and where in fact some 
 hundreds of industrious tenants had to be displaced as sacrifices 
 to this passion for sport. (Cheers.) These game-preserving mag- 
 nates are as much out of their place — nay, far more out of it — 
 than the Red Indian in the backwoods of America. They are 
 in a false position, and for the sake of themselves and their 
 country, the sooner they come out of it the better, for the 
 people will not long permit such an anomaly, such an in- 
 justice, even although wooed by the siren strain of that well- 
 known couplet, which I will venture slightly to paraphrase, 
 and say : — 
 
 " Let wealth and learning, laws and commerce, die, 
 But leave us still our game monopoly." 
 
 (Loud cheers and laughter.) 
 £rmei\^*^^^*^ I propose now to say something in regard to the amount 
 of damage done by game to various classes of the community, 
 and I will begin with the farmer. My own opinion would be,
 
 15 
 
 of course, no value upon this point, for I am no agricul- 
 turist, but I will give some statements from those who are 
 authorities upon the question, and it appears indubitable 
 from what they say that the amount of damage is in some 
 localities so great as to be positively incalculable. I will 
 first quote the evidence given before the Committee of 1873 
 by Mr. Wright, a valuer in the county of which I have the 
 honour to represent the chief town, Leicestershire. lie says 
 that he allowed between £800 and £900 to one tenant, and 
 that on some parts of the land the allowance was £12 to £13 
 an acre. Mr. Hewitt, at the Sussex Chamber of Agriculture, 
 said, as regards rabbits, that — 
 
 " Last year lie made a valuation of a certain farm for the damage RaLLits. 
 done by rabbits. He put it down, and was confirmed in his opinion by- 
 others, at £25 per day. These rabbits entirely destroyed the crops, 
 and the farmer had to plough up his fields." 
 
 And now for hares. I quote from the Agricultural Com- 
 missioner of the Daily I^ews, writing from Lincolnshire 
 (October, 1879) :— 
 
 " Game depredation means that anywhere in the neighbourhood of 
 coverts you get three quarters of barley per acre instead of five. Yonr 
 wheats are damaged by hares and rabbits in a way wliich'makes the Hares, 
 estimation of damage rather diflicult. Riding past a crop you might 
 think it level and upstanding ; but go into it, and you find innumer- 
 able tracks leading to plots which are eaten down and thus clcaicd as 
 playgrounds. Rabbits nibble the roots and stems of young quick, and 
 destroy scores of yards together of good hedgerows, iu addition to which 
 the keepers ruin the hedges in innumerable places in digging after the 
 ferrets when catching rabbits." 
 
 Now, my hon. friends the members for South Norfolk and 
 South Leicestershire must be able to correct me if I am wrong 
 in all this, and if I am not, I want to know what alteration 
 they have to propose. (Cheers.) The Agricultural Com- 
 missioner of the Daili/ Netvs says again : — 
 
 " I heard of one case in which a field of turnips, lying far away from 
 any other roots, was wholly consumed by flocks of hares, insomuch that 
 the tenant, in an ironical mood, wrote this note to the landlord : 
 ' Please send a load of turnips, or the hares will starve.' " (Loud 
 cheers and laughter.) 
 
 Here is a statement with regard to a gentleman, whoso 
 name I will not mention, but who is well known in a certain 
 part of Yorkshire. Of him it is written —
 
 IG 
 
 " In this district we aro aliuost .surrounded by rabbit preserves. Mr, 
 F. actually eats his tenants up, and one of them, not long ago, during 
 a snowstorm, kindled fires in the turnip fields to keep off the hares. 
 The report is in most people's mouths that he actually buried 200 
 rabbits rather than reduce the price to his game dealer, while within a 
 few miles hundreds of poor weavers were starving." (Loud cheer" 
 from the Opposition benches.) 
 
 At a lecture given in Harapsliire, at the Botlcy Farmers' 
 Club, on " Hindrances to Agricultural Progress/' at wliicli, 
 as the farmers were not under the influence of the landlords 
 they seem to have thought game an evil, one gentleman 
 said : — 
 
 *' There can be no doubt that the loss by game of agricultural pro- 
 duce, irrespective of the impediments to the cultivation, is enormous. 
 It is not disputed by practical men that at present only one farm in five 
 can be rented free of the game, and probably this freedom applies only 
 to one-eighth of the leased land in the kingdom," 
 
 But people say that so far as tlie farmer is concerned he 
 has compensation if lie can prove damage. Vv ell, in the ilrst 
 place, I must premise tliat this is not simply a question 
 betvv'Gcn the landlord and the farmer. Even supposing that 
 the farmer can be satisfied with the compensation which he 
 receives, the country <';nd the labourer would still remain to 
 be reckoned with. But everybody who has ever studied the 
 matter knows for a fact that compensation to the farmer for 
 loss by game is simply a sham. (Hear, hear.) Mr. Grray, 
 of Dilston, declared that he never knew a farmer to get half 
 what he was entitled to ; and a farmer must be a ver}^ pros- 
 perous man if he can bear to venture into the law courts 
 against his landlord. Here is what happened to one of 
 them. I quote from a speech of Mr. F. Johnson, at the East 
 Elding Chamber of Agriculture, in May, 1879 : — 
 
 " The owner of the estate lived far away, and the shooting got into 
 the ha-.ds of a lot of lawyers, who soon had it filled with ground game. 
 One of t'ne tenants v/as noted for liis trim well-kept hedges ; they were 
 like ^^arden fences. These were all pulled up by the game preservers, 
 and stuck into the ground to prevent poaching by nets. Sheep grazing 
 in the field got the thorns fast in their wool, and they became almost 
 v,-ihl witii the annoyance. The farmer, too, was almost v>^ild with the 
 damage done to his growing crop,-:. (Laughter.) He got the damage 
 valued, and sued the parties, getting a satisfactory verdict ; but the 
 lav/yers took the case to a liigher and more expensive court, and tiiere 
 the original verdict was reversed. (Loud laughter,) The f firmer was
 
 17 
 
 condemned in all costs, and he was financially ruined, finishing all np 
 by taking poison." (Renewed laughter on the Ministerial benches.) 
 
 I am very sorry tbat the fact of a farmer being driven to Sympathy 
 suicide by tbese Game Laws should be a matter for laugliter ?f farmers' 
 amongst honourable gentlemen on the opposite benches, who, Friends." 
 I thought, always prided themselves on being the farmers' 
 friends, (llear, hear, and loud cheers.) 
 
 A Warwickshire farmer — a tenant of an hon. member of 
 
 this House — writes to the Anti-Game Law League that — 
 
 " Having no clause in his agreement reserving game, he is eaten up 
 and nearly ruined by rabbits, &c." 
 
 He threatens proceedings, and is told by the agent that he 
 
 will be dragged from court to court till his purse is empty. 
 
 Finally, he is told that if he will promise in writing not in 
 
 any way to interfere with the game or the keepers, 5 per 
 
 cent, will be deducted, or 2s. per acre, from his half-year's 
 
 rent now due. He adds in his letter — 
 
 "If I had no family I would spend my last shilling as free as rain 
 rather than suffer the injustice I aai suffering." (Cheers.) 
 
 But then we are told that this can be dealt with by free- Freedom of 
 dom of contract. I have already pointed out that even if ^'^^^^^^c*- 
 the farmers w^ere satisfied it does not follow that the country 
 should be ; but I may also &ay that there are various kinds 
 of freedom of contract, and tLere are various ways of acqui- 
 escence in a particular course. The freedom of contract 
 allowed to the farmer is of much the same kind as the freedom 
 allowed to the convict when the hangman taps him on the 
 stioirlder, and points the way to the gallows. He does not 
 resist; he says not a word, and he goes quietly because he 
 knows his case is settled. (Cheers.) Be it remembered Exceptional 
 there is no class in the country whose position is more the^farmer. 
 hopeless than that of the farmer. A trader can take 
 his capital and invest it in some other business, but the 
 farmer usually knows no other trade than that to which 
 he has been brought up, and he must put up with any in- 
 justice or to be turned out of his land, and left to his only 
 other remedy — that of emigration. A most amusing illus- 
 tration of the idea that farmers are free to contract is shown 
 by the condition of the Scotch and the English Game Laws.
 
 own ? " 
 
 Here, if a lease is silent respecting game, the property in it 
 resides in the occupier ; in Scotland, if there is no clause in 
 the lease, it resides in the landlord ; and nobody cares two- 
 pence whether it is the one or the other, simply because the 
 absolute power is in the will of the landlord. If the law 
 gives him the game he keeps it, and if it does not he takes it. 
 "May I not The noble lord the member for the Haddington Burghs 
 with niy (Lord Elcho) is a great stickler for the rights of contract, 
 
 and, from the line of examination which he pursued before 
 the Committee (1873), is evidently of opinion that the landlord 
 should get all he can for his property, and that if he can get 
 more money by growing deer than by growing corn or sheep 
 he is perfectly free to do so. That is a novel way of asking 
 a question often asked before, " Am I not entitled to do what 
 I like with my own? " It is scarcely worth while discus- 
 sing that question now. But the question may be answered 
 in one of two ways : First, you may not do what you like 
 with your own ; or secondly, you may do what you like with 
 your own, but your land is not the sort of property with 
 which you can do as you like. I will only add further that 
 the legitimate conclusion to be derived from this theory of 
 the rights of contract, so interpreted, is the pressing neces- 
 sity for a radical change in our land laws. 
 
 Then we are told continually that we are interfering with the 
 sentimental relation between landlord and tenant, and disturb- 
 ing that blessed harmony which is supposed to exist between 
 the two. Those who talk in that sort of way must be rather 
 surprised at the number of cases in which there have been 
 meetings of farmers to express sympathy and to give testi- 
 monials to evicted farmers. I take it that the case of Mr. 
 Hope, of Fenton Barnes, is not forgotten in the farming 
 world, and I may add to that two little illustrations which I 
 have on my notes, I beg the House to excuse me if I 
 m.ake too many quotations, but I am in this dilemma : on the 
 one hand I do not want to have it said that I did not prove 
 my assertions, and, on the other hand, I should be very sorry 
 to think that I was wearying the House. (Loud cheers.) 
 
 Mr. Clayden, an Essex farmer, holding a thousand acres, 
 whose family have been seventy years on the farm, was
 
 19 
 
 evicted because he would not submit to a clause preventing 
 him from shooting rabbits or catching rats in banks. Mr. 
 Clark, a tenant farmer in Norfolk, said at his auction — 
 
 " My fathers have resided here nearly a hundred years ; I leave 
 because, in my Landlord's own words, I have been disposed to discuss 
 the question of game. I trust that the time is fast approaching when 
 the tenant farmers will support each other in this matter." 
 
 IN'ow I call upon my hon, friends the Members for South 
 Norfolk and South Leicestershire, to stand forward as the 
 champions of that cause. (Cheers.) So much for the effect 
 of these laws upon the farmer. 
 
 Next let me say a few words as to the labourers. I have The labourer, 
 endeavoured to divide what I have to say into various por- 
 tions, so as to show how these laws affect various classes in 
 the community ; but I am quite aware that it is very difficult 
 to make that division effective, because these divisions must 
 necessarily run into each other. That which is injurious to 
 the farmer cannot be beneficial to the community or to the 
 labourer. Still, I make this division for convenience, and I 
 will repeat myself as little as possible. (Cheers.) Now, 
 with regard to the labourer, what strikes one first is their 
 evident tendency to limit his enjoyment in the l^d of his 
 birth to the roads and highways, as has been frequently de- 
 plored by my right hon. friend the member for Birmingham 
 (Mr. Bright). Again, as has been pointed out by Mr. Arch, Mr. Joseph 
 the eloquent defender of the rights of his class, these laws 
 not only destroy the produce of the labourers' gardens, but 
 they make the very existence of small freeholds almost im- 
 possible, these little oases of freedom being naturally eye- 
 sores to the neighbouring landlords. No more is it open to 
 the labourer or his family to wander by the brook or in the 
 glen in search of flowers, blackberries, or birds' nests — the 
 man himself is charged with poaching, and his family at 
 least, disturb the game. 
 
 But above all, the damage done to the labourer is that these 
 laws are wholesale manufacturers of crime. Upwards of ten 
 thousand criminals suffered last year under these laws. 
 Nothing more disastrous can be done to the community or to 
 humanity than to make people disrespect the law, by setting 
 
 Arch.
 
 20 
 
 tlie law to punisli, as a crime, that wliicli tlieir conscience does 
 not tell them is a sin. They may indeed go innocently into 
 the jail the first time, but facilis desceoisus averni, and having 
 been there once, they are pretty sure to go there again. 
 
 " Oh," I liave heard gentlemen say, " poachers, scoundrels, thieves ! 
 if they don't take our game they would take our poultry, or some- 
 thing still more valuable." (Loud cheers from the Ministerial benches.) 
 
 I am very sorry to hear that cheer, because the assertion is 
 one utterly without foundation. There is no class in the 
 coimtry at the present time which regards poaching as a crime, 
 any more than smugglers in the old days of the revenue laws 
 regarded smuggling as a crime. If hon. gentlemen believed 
 that a poacher was a common thief, would the}^ be so anxious 
 as they notoriously are to secure his services as a gamekeeper ? 
 It would really be an insult to the country gentlemen to 
 say that they believed that an offence against the Game 
 Laws is a crime, seeing that it is one they are continually 
 committing themselves, 
 
 Mr. Young,Secretaryto the Board of Excise, said, in his testi- 
 mony before the Committee : " A great many gentlemen shoot 
 all the year round without taking out a license.'' (Hear, hear, 
 and laughter.) I had once a list sent me of gentlemen who had 
 shot without a license — of gentlemen not unconnected with 
 hon. gentlemen whom I see before me. "V\' hat does a country 
 gentleman do if he wishes to have a great head of pheasants ? 
 He obtains them or their eggs from somebody — I will not 
 say he steals them, because that would be to accuse him of a 
 crime — but I will say he procures them, (Loud laughter.) 
 Lord Stradbroke,' writing to the Times two or three years ago, 
 says — 
 
 " Only yesterday a box containing pheasant's eggs was sent from a 
 station in East Suffolk, addressed to the gamekeeper of a noble Earl in 
 Scotland, and I can prove that such boxes are continually sent by a 
 notorious receiver to different places in England.'^ 
 
 A writer in the Times, of the same date, says — 
 
 ''To show the enormous extent this nefarious trade is carried to 
 yearly, I know a London gamed ealer who has just received an order to 
 suj)ply a nobleman with 10,000 pheasants' eggs." 
 
 Now, I say it would be a libel on the country gentlemen of
 
 21 
 
 England wlio are addicted to this practice if I did not main- 
 lain that they themselves do not think poaching a crime. 
 (Hear.) The other day a chairman of a bench of magistrates 
 was fined, at the Pershore Petty Sessions, for a breach of 
 the Game Laws, for killing pheasants three weeks before they 
 were in season. It may be asked, was there not a great out- 
 cry of public opinion ? There was. (Hear, hear.) But the 
 public opinion w^as not against him for violating the Game 
 Laws, which he was there to administer, and, I am told, was 
 wont to administer with something more than usual severity; 
 his neighbours were angry that he should do so mean a thing 
 as to shoot, before the time, pheasants reared at the barn door, 
 which had not been turned into a preserve, and hunted into 
 partial wildness. The Chairman of the Board of Conservators 
 in Wales, writes : — 
 
 '• My experience is that every one, from the highest to the lowest, har 
 a sympathy with the poacher, and willingly purchases without askinj; 
 questions. I could tell you of clergymen, medical men, leading solici- 
 tors in a large way of business, tradespeople, and others, who all supply 
 themselves from this source." 
 
 Is it not rather mean, with evidence such as this before us, 
 to brand the lowest class of poachers with being criminals and 
 thieves ? I think it is hardly worthy of gentlemen. (Cheers.) 
 I have already said that I believe our Game Law code to be 
 unparalleled in the civilized world for injustice and severity. 
 I will now proceed to show that it lias no parallel in our 
 criminal code for the severity with which it is admiriisteredj 
 for the partiality of its tribunal, and for the absolute ille- 
 gality with which it is frequently enforced. And, first, for 
 the violence with which it is administered; a violence 
 which would be astounding, were we not unhappily too much 
 habituated to its recurrence. Shakespeare tells us — 
 " Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill," 
 
 and surely nothing but laws so infamous could call for such 
 
 outrageous execution of them. I will trouble the House with 
 
 but one or two cases out of the legion that I might adduce — 
 
 Bridlington Petty Sessions.— Two poachers were charged with night Violence of 
 poaching, and Green, a game watcher, was charged with shooting one of keepers, 
 them. Stanning, a keeper, called to Appleby, a poacher, to stop, or lie 
 would "warm" him. He then ordered Green to fire, and Green took
 
 22 
 
 deliberate aim at Appleby, who dropped down. He was examined by 
 Dr. Alison, who found that he had forty- eight gun-shots lodged in his 
 thigh, back, and the right side of his head. 
 
 That is hardly the way in which the law should be admin- 
 istered in a civilised country — to say nothing of a Christian 
 country. (Loud cheers.) 
 
 Chelmsfokd Assizes. — Samuel Musk,ahead keeper, was watching with 
 his under keeper, Horsenall, and two other men in a wood. A couple of 
 mock pheasants had been placed in a tree, and the keepers were near the 
 spot. About half-jpast one iu the morning they saw several men coming 
 up the ride, who went towards the tree where the mock pheasants had 
 been placed, and directly afterwards shots were fired. 
 
 Now, a great deal has been said against England as a 
 nation of shopkeepers, but this is surely much worse than mere 
 shopkeeping. If a tradesman hung up pewter spoons made 
 to imitate gold ones, and, when a thief came to steal them, 
 he fired at him, he would surely be hung if the man so 
 shot died of his injuries. Here is a case from Mildenhall, 
 in Suffolk — 
 
 John Wharfe, keeper, said : On the men seeing him they ran off. 
 He then let loose an immense mastiff, 22 inches high, partially muzzled, 
 which succeeded in catching Mutnm, and pulled him down. Whilst 
 Mutum was defending himself from the attack of this dog, which Wharfe, 
 the keeper, admitted was a ferocious one, he was struck on the head, 
 stunned, and secured. Prisoners said they had both been bitten by the 
 dog, and Mutum complained of being severely struck by Wharfe, whilst 
 trying to keep the dog off. The Bench, in consideration of the severe 
 punishment they had received from the keepers, mitigated the punish- 
 ment to two months' imprisonment, and sureties for twelve months. 
 
 (Loud laughter and ironical cheers.) We have all heard, I 
 suppose, of the cases in Wales last year, which really, in 
 some parts of the country, almost amounted to civil war on a 
 small scale. There was a fight between the keepers and 
 the poachers, and the latter barricaded themselves in a stable, 
 and were besieged. A correspondent of the Times, writing 
 from Barbadoes during the administration of Governor 
 Pope-Henessey, says (and in speaking of Mr. Henessey I 
 should like, in passing, to pay him my humble tribute of 
 respect in that, to whatever Government he may be ap- 
 pointed, he seems to carry with him the spirit of justice 
 and liumanity to the people over whom he is placed* 
 (Loud cheers.) The Times correspondent writes : — 
 
 " I have heard but of one complaint against the troops. It wa^ that 
 of a planter, who declared that the soldiers had misbehaved themselves
 
 23 
 
 because, tliongh his rabbits and pigeons liad been stolen, they had not 
 shot a single nigger." 
 
 That unfortunate planter was in a wrong position. lie 
 sliould not have been a planter in Barbadoes, but a landlord 
 in England. God knows we show little respect in shooting 
 our niggers when after rabbits or pheasants — so little, indeed, 
 that Canon Kingsley, no hater of the aristocracy or true 
 sport, was stung into writing, in his well-known ballad of the 
 " Poacher's Widow," what honourable gentlemen opposite 
 may perhaps deem a severe condemnation — 
 
 " There's blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire. 
 There's blood on your pointer's feet ; 
 There's blood on the game you sell, squire, 
 And there's blood on the game you eat." 
 
 In further testimony to the exceptional severity of these Severity of 
 laws, I will quote ihe evidence of Mr. Marsh Phillips, then i^aw^^"^^ 
 Under Secretary for the Home Department, before the Com- 
 mittee of 1846. He said — 
 
 " I am not aware of any case except under this Act (the Night Poach- 
 ing Act) of magistrates having the power to impose imprisonment with 
 hard labour in default of finding sureties." 
 
 But this is not the worst. Their administration's distinctly 
 tainted with absolute illegality. Perhaps hon. gentlemen may 
 say that for this at least there is a remed}^, in the shape of an 
 action against the justices, or an appeal to the Home Secre- 
 tary. I must say that those who can say this sincerely only 
 betray their ignorance of the condition cf things in our agricul- 
 tural districts. Without knowledge, without funds, witliout 
 any public opinion to seek support from, the peasant must 
 and does submit to every wrong he suffers in such cases. 
 I must trouble the House with one or two instances of the 
 positive illegality to which I have referred. The first case 
 is one which, perhaps, I should rather term quasi illegal 
 than positively so, but surelj^ to hold out a premium to 
 perjury should be very near the borders of illegality — 
 
 "At the Loughborough Police Court a gamekeeper told the judge Temptation 
 that his employer, Lord St. Maur, allowed him £1 for every conviction ^^ perjury, 
 ho obtained for night poaching. The judge expressed his surprise, and 
 on being told that it was the custom, said he was sorry to hear it. It 
 was holding out a premium to gamekeepers to perjure themselves ; it 
 was a very frightful thing." (Hear, hear, from the Ministerial benches.)
 
 24 
 
 The next case I will mention was at Lewes, just two years 
 ago, before the Lord Chief Justice. It appeared that when 
 the keepers went out to watch they took with them a large " 
 dog to hunt poachers, which ran after them, and attempted 
 to bite one of them. Hitherto, we have thought that the use 
 of dogs for hunting men had ceased, even in the interior of 
 Jamaica. It seems we were mistaken. The Lord Chief 
 Justice then observed that the use of a dog for such a pur- 
 pose was most improper, and if keepers were proved to have 
 allowed a savage dog to worry a man, although he might be 
 a poacher, they Avould get themselves into serious trouble, 
 (Hear, hear, and cheers from the Ministerial benches.) 
 Only, unhappily, it appears that these keepers never do get 
 themselves into serious trouble. (Loud cheers.) Later on 
 it appeared that after a scuffle between the keepers and three 
 > men who were trespassing in search of game, that the latter 
 
 ran off, followed by the keepers, and one of the keepers 
 knocked a poacher down who was running aw^ay. The Lord 
 Murder or Chief Justice again interfered, and told the keeper he had no 
 manslaugliter. j.-^^^ whatever to do that. He had no doubt that the stick 
 used was not a light one, and he might have killed the man. 
 If he had, his offence would at least have been manslaughter, 
 and possibly something even more serious. He advised the 
 keepers to be careful in future, and not to repeat such acts of 
 violence. (Loud cheers from the Ministerial benches.) But 
 why this squeamishness on the part of hon. gentlemen oppo- 
 site? Surely their expression of feeling is out of place. Do 
 they deny that they send out bands of armed watchers to 
 arrest and fight the poachers, and if they do, they admit all 
 that has here been said ? 
 
 Here is another case, tried only last month at Liverpool, 
 before Lord Coleridge. The poacher ran away. He usually 
 dots run away, and indeed, if he can get off, he of course 
 prefers to do so. The gamekeeper fired at him, and hit him 
 in the back ; another shot was then fired, but he could not 
 say whether it iiit him or not. He went into the wood and 
 became insensible, and lay there until he was found some 
 time after by the keeper. After he recovered of his wounds, 
 we are told, he vras brought up — it seems a little bit of grim
 
 pleasantry — and imprisoned for 14 days for poacTiing ! Now 
 I will not believe that there is an hon. gentleman present, 
 game preserver or not, who, when an abstract case of this 
 kind is thus put before him, does not feel a thrill of indig- 
 nation that a human being — to say nothing of a British 
 citizen — should be shot down like a dog for hunting rabbits 
 at night. All honour, then, to Lord Justice Coleridge, who, 
 in sentencing the gamekeeper who thus wounded the poacher, 
 said that although poachers were engaged in a pursuit that 
 was a violation of the law, their lives must bo protected, and 
 sentenced the gamekeeper to twelve months' hard labour. 
 That, surely, was not a great punishment for a deliberate 
 attempt to murder. If that poacher had died, I know no p^g^ggJ.^g^^Q 
 reason why that man should not have been put in the dock put in the 
 and tried for murder, and why his employer should not have 
 stood by his side as an accessory to murder before the fact. 
 In truth, one great advantage of the abolition of tbe Game 
 Laws would be that the door which oi3ens on the gallows 
 would no longer be slammed in the face of such unques- 
 tionable deserts. 
 
 I cannot resist the pleasure of again quoting tltfe Marquis 
 of Ailesbury : — 
 
 •' No one had enjoyed in the past a day's sliootiug more than himself, 
 bur. as for the whole "battue system, he abhorred it. The Game Laws 
 which liad rendered this system possible, were hateful, and always had 
 been hateful, in his eyes. Half the crimes of violence in the ountry 
 were dh-ectly due to these pernicious Game Laws. For his ov/n part 
 he had never ceased to inveigh against them. He had always pro- 
 tested against the high preserving of game carried on in his brother's 
 time on the Savernake Estate. When, through these iniquitous laws, 
 four persons had lost their lives in that neighbourhood (two policemen 
 murdered, and tv/o men hanged for the nuiriler), he said to his brother, 
 ' Thaiik God, it was not on our estate. How could we ever have jusri- 
 fied ourselves in our own eyes again had our game preservirig brought 
 about such a horrible catastrophe ? '" 
 
 And now a few words upon the enormous and prodigious Enormous 
 penalties by which they are enforced. I vv'ill not trouble ^^^^^ 
 the House with many illustrations, but I m^ust quote two 
 or three. An old man named Harrison was charged at the 
 Evesham Petty Sessions with having shot at a rabbit near 
 his allotment ground. That was surely not a very severe 
 offence, and the defendant was strongly recommended to
 
 2G 
 
 mercy by the complainaut, ou the ground that he had served 
 his country as a soldier with credit. For this offence the 
 poor old man was sentenced to pay 40s. and costs. In de- 
 fault of payment he was sentenced to two months' hard labour 
 in Worcester gaol. (Sensation.) I may mention for the 
 comfort of lion, gentlemen opposite, that the fine was after- 
 Avards paid and the man released. 
 
 The Scotsman reports the following case : — 
 
 " A farm servant, named Garvock, was cliarged before the Sheriff of 
 Aberdeen with trespassing in pursuit of game. A hare had been started 
 by some women who were at work in a harvest field with the accused. 
 Two dogs chased the hare, and were followed by Garvock who, ou 
 going up and finding the animal killed, placed it behind a dyke and 
 directed a gamekeeper to the spot. The Sheriff said the breach of the 
 law was only technical, but he was compelled to inflict a ^Denalty. The 
 defendant was fined a shilling and ordered to pay £5 expenses." 
 
 (Hear, hear.) Here is another case, at the Epsom Petty 
 
 Sessions : — 
 
 " Walter Jones was charged with being on land in search of rabbits. 
 The defendant pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to undergo three 
 weeks' hard labour, to give personal security for £10 for six months, 
 and to find two sureties, each fur £5, for the space of twelve months, 
 or in default, six months' imprisonment." 
 
 Now, I may appeal to the House whether there is any 
 portion of our criminal j urisdiction whatever where offences 
 are punished with such tremendous severity. 
 
 I have charged that the Game Laws are administered 
 with great partiality. That needs no proof. Of course they 
 are partially administered, because they are administered by 
 the very class who have an interest in the laws they main- 
 tain. I have not a word to say against the country 
 gentlemen. They are Englishmen, no better and no worse 
 than their fellows, put in a thoroughly false position, and 
 probably do no worse and no better than any other class in 
 an equally false position would do. Who would consent, in 
 an issue between employer and workmen, to allow the jury 
 to be composed altogether of masters or of tradesmen ? The 
 thing is ridiculous. The point is indeed very well put by 
 the Saturday Eevieic, when it says : — 
 
 " The magistrate who convicts a thief acts in the interest of every 
 man in the court ; the magistrate who convicts a poacher commonly 
 acts in the interest of nobody but those on the bench. The number of
 
 27 
 
 n;;igi tiates-whu would couKciousl}^ pervert tlie law to convict a poacher 
 is probably very small, but the number of magistrates who uncon- 
 sciously carry to the bench the passions of the preserve is very large." 
 
 A reporter in a Yorkshire Police Court writes to me that 
 
 he has seen one of the Justices give evidence from the bench 
 
 in his own case. Again, in a very interesting book, written 
 
 by Mr. Kay, Q.O., I find the following :— 
 
 " I was, a few years ago, at a dinner-table in London, opposite one of 
 the kindest and most genial of men. He had for many years presided 
 as Chairman at the Quarter Sessions of a great game-preserving 
 county. He told us in his hearty way that it had often happened 
 to him that men charged with various offences had been tried before 
 him at sessions, where the case was so weak that he had turned to 
 his brother Justices and said that there was really no sufficient evi- 
 dence against this man, and that he had been answered ' Oh, yoii must 
 not let him off, he is a damned poacher ! ' " 
 
 Mr. Kay goes on to say : — 
 
 " Of what chance of mercy or of a really fair trial has a known 
 or suspected poacher before such a tribunal. I remember the great 
 and good Sir Thos. Fowell Buxton — over whose land I often shot — 
 once saying to me, ' A poacher has no chance of mercy before theae 
 tribunals. I have often had to protest against the sentences pro- 
 nounced by my brother justices for really trivial offences.' " 
 
 I am sorry not to see my hon. friend, the member for Every year 
 
 *' -^ ' . thousands of 
 
 North Warwickshire (Mr. Newdegate) in his place, for I illegalities 
 had a word or two to say to him, which I will say, although J^^^°^c!° 
 he is not here. He asserted once before, with regard to 
 these cases of hardship, that they are very few, and during 
 the discussion on the Prisons Bill, when he was urging the 
 general good administration and activity of the county Justices, 
 he paid me perhaps the highest, or shall I say the most ex- 
 travagant, compliment ever paid to any man — for he said, 
 ecriously, as I believe, that he honoured the course I had 
 taken in this House, and that he was sure, so long as I re- 
 mained in it, that there would not be a single case of 
 maladministration on the part of the county Justices which 
 I should not bring forward. Nothing can be more exagge- 
 rated than such a supposition. The House would not, and 
 ought not, to allow itself to be made a court of review for all 
 alleged offences of unpaid magistrates all over the country. 
 The course which I have taken has been this — that although 
 I have had innumerable cases brought under my notice, I 
 have never, I t,hink I may say, brought a case forward which
 
 28 
 
 I have not substantiated, nor one which was not characterised 
 by gross cruelty or absolute illegality. So far from the 
 cases I have brought forward being the measure of the in- 
 justice of the country Justices, I should rather say that there 
 are thousands for every one that I bring forward. 
 
 IN'ow, as regards the general injury done to the community 
 by the Grame Laws, it is not easy to adduce any specific 
 evidence beyond the injury which I have shown to be 
 inflicted on various classes of the community, I would say, 
 . generally, that the curse of sterility is on these laws. If he 
 is blessed who makes two blades of corn grow where only one 
 grew before, then he who only allows two to grow where 
 there were previously three, is * * — well he is the other thing. 
 (Laugliter.) I will not attempt to calculate the damage. 
 I have heard it put at twenty- five and fifty millions. It is, 
 in fact, simply incalculable, varying greatly with the season, 
 the locality, and above all with the caprice of the landlord. 
 On this point I would venture to appeal to my right hon. 
 friend the member for Greenwich (Mr. Grladstone) for his 
 support. In a letter which he wrote some months since 
 to a large food importer (from Australia), he said : — 
 
 "I look upon an augmentation of the supply of animal food, in 
 whatever way it can best be effected, as the most important perhaps of 
 all the questions of purely material interest which now press themselves 
 on public attention." 
 
 In view of that statement, I venture to ask my right hon. 
 friend whether the abolition of the Game Laws has not 
 now become one of the most important of all the questions 
 of purely material interest that now press themselves on 
 public attention. And indeed, when we are told by Mr. Oaird 
 that we consume annually £107,000,000 of imported agri- 
 cultural produce every year, what possible excuse can there 
 be for turning loose these hares and rabbits, which consume 
 such enormous quantities of food? My hon. friend the 
 member for South Norfolk (Mr. Clare Eead) declared some 
 years ago that " 40,000 more sheep could be easily kept in 
 Norfolk if hares and rabbits were only kept within reasonable 
 bounds." 
 
 Another evil which I would quote, beside the positive 
 injury done to the farmer, and the injury to every class of the
 
 29 
 
 community, is the fact that the Game Law system is utterly 
 incompatible with high farming. It is obvious that it must 
 be so, for the larger the crop the greater the power of vermin 
 to damage it. Besides, there can be no doubt that enter- 
 prising farmers will hardly care to invest much in a farm 
 where a large head of game is preserved. ('^Oh, oh!") "Well, 
 if hon. gentlemen want my authority, I will quote what 
 Mr. Pusey said before the Committee of 1846 : — 
 
 " I have seldom had less on my hands than 2,000 acres, and I havo 
 enclosed 4,000 acres of waste. I found the two occupations of a game 
 preserver and an improver of land by planting; and farming perfectly 
 incompatible." 
 
 Again, he says, as a sc-rt of illustration of the damage done 
 
 by game : — 
 
 " I allowed my gamekeeper to have four acres of land near the covers 
 rent free ; but he was obliged to give it up, the game injured him so 
 much." 
 
 Actually, a little spot of land round these covers given to 
 a man rent free was absolutely valueless. 
 
 Now, my hon. friend the member for North Warwick- 
 shire (Mr. Newdegate) said on the last occasion, when this 
 matter was debated in this House, that all this was very 
 well before the Corn Laws were repealed, but that now 
 they were repealed, and we had the power of getting free 
 corn from all parts of the world, that it was ridiculous to 
 talk about the damage to the community by this loss. 
 That is so bad an argument that I hardly know how to 
 answer it; but I will try to do so by venturing on an 
 illustration. You tie a man's two arras behind his back, 
 and turn him out to earn his living. He rebels, protests, 
 objects, and, as a matter of great favour, you cut one arm 
 free. Growing bolder b}^ this concession, he asks to have 
 the other freed, and then you say, '* Ungrateful scoundrel, 
 did not I free one arm, and here you liave the impudence to 
 ask for the other." Please God we will free both arms 
 before long ! (Loud cheers.) 
 
 There is one other point to which I should wish briefly 
 to allude — the utter disturbance of all the usual processes of 
 nature, so far as our fauna are concerned, by your system 
 of Game Laws. In order to keep up your game you destroy
 
 30 
 
 all lands of predatory birds and. animals, and you not only 
 
 so lose a great element of the picturesque in the country, but 
 
 you do a great injury to the science of natural history, while 
 
 you do positive injury to the farmer through the increase of 
 
 vermin which these creatures would naturally prey upon. 
 
 "While you destroy hawks, weasels, and owls, the farmer is 
 
 eaten up by rats, mice, and pigeons. No one knows more 
 
 about this matter than the Rev. F. 0. Morris, and ha 
 
 writes :— 
 
 "Six stacks of corn were tlirashed out on one day and one the 
 following, and no less than six stone of mice were destroyed oji the 
 occasion, besides the number killed by dogs — in all some 2,000 killed 
 in tvvo days or less, on a portion only of the stacks at one farmstead. 
 Tho rats feed in the winter on the corn put down in the woods for the 
 pheasants, and increase and multiply to a ruinous extent. Their 
 natural enemies — the weasels, stoats, owls, kestrels, and other hawks — 
 are most cruelly destroyed by pole traps, and others set on the ground ; 
 and as to the damage done by hares and rabbits to growing crops in 
 fields adjoining woods, it is most grievous." 
 
 Why, the fact is, in any other country than ours, did such 
 a nuisance affecting the life and property of the nation 
 exist, we should put a price upon the head of these vermin 
 and destroy them. 
 
 In this next paragraph will hon. members please 
 read for tigers the word hares. (Laughter and cheers.) 
 Dr. Hunter, the Director-General of Statistics to the 
 Government of India, states that the ravages of tigers 
 form one of the obstacles to the extension of civilization. 
 Already the Indian Government offers large premiums for 
 the destruction of wild animals, and those Nawabs andBajahs 
 who still pride themselves upon retaining preserves of savage 
 beasts for hunting purposes ought to subordinate the gratifi- 
 cation of their tastes to the public welfare. (Cheers.) In 
 Australia they are nearly devoured by rabbits, and accordingly 
 the Legislature has interfered and passed a rabbit-suppres- 
 sion bill. They have authorised the common ^' Shire Coun- 
 cils " to levy a rate of Id. per acre to defray the expense of 
 killing them. All brushwood fences in a rabbit district are 
 to bo burnt down, at the option of the inspectors, and 
 any one turning rabbits loose is liable to a fine of £10 for 
 each offence.
 
 31 
 
 Kow, Sir, I am often asksd why I go in for so extreme a Nothing 
 
 measure? — why I don't attempt something moderate, which aboHti^n.^^^ 
 
 I should have a chance of carrying ? My answer in the first 
 
 place is, that no modification of the Game Laws can efiect 
 
 any good purpose, for this precise reason, that all the evils 
 
 that I have described arise from the excessive head of 
 
 " game," and nothing but a destruction of a large part of 
 
 this superfluity can eff'ect the purposes desired. My motion 
 
 is also moderate, in the sense that it would destroy two 
 
 extremes — it would put down the battue system, and would 
 
 take away all employment from the poacher. Now I am 
 
 not alone in this opinion. Lord Hatherley stated — 
 
 " I do not believe tliat the great grievance arising from the Game Laws 
 can be relieved by any palliations, and therefore they must be entirely 
 got rid of." 
 
 And my hon. friend the member for Bury St. Edmund's 
 
 (Mr. Greene) — v/hose absence I regret, and whose genial 
 
 criticism I should have been very happy to be subject to this 
 
 evening — said, on the last occasion I brought this subject 
 
 forward — 
 
 " There was no step between the maintenance of the Game Laws 
 and the proi^osals on the subject by the hon. member for Leicester. 
 Either it was right that game should be preserved, or it was wrong. If 
 it was wrong the system should be attacked." 
 
 Now I know it is the fashion to attempt to frighten Trespass, 
 farmers by talking about the dangers of trespass if the 
 Game Laws were abolished, but the dangers of trespass have 
 nothing to do with the matter. I am not now discussing the 
 trespass laws — they may or they may not be sufficiently 
 stringent— but this I do know, that if the Acts which I pro- 
 pose to abolish were done away with, there would obviously 
 be far less temptation to trespass than there is now, as the 
 farmers will very quickly see when they have no landlords to 
 preside over their deliberations. For instance, Mr. Hewitt 
 said at the Sussex Chamber of Agriculture — 
 
 " Lord Malmesbury said if the Game Laws were abolished, the fact 
 would necessitate a severe trespass law, and increase the rural con- 
 stabulary by some 10,000 or 15,000 men. (" Oh, oh ! ") Ho was glad 
 to hear that significant cry, for ho believed there was not a tenant 
 farmer in the hall who was so insane as to put any credence in the 
 reckless statement of Lord Malmesbury. As farmers they knew that
 
 32 
 
 if the temptations to poach were removed, that crime would gradually 
 
 decrease." 
 
 I will also quote on this point the testimony of another 
 
 gentleman, who, with the exception of my right hon. friend 
 
 the member for Birmingham, has perhaps done more than 
 
 any one against these atrocious laws —the late Mr. Welford. 
 
 He said — 
 
 "No trespasses other than game trespasses are ever committed in 
 England which the law does not effectually prevent or punish. But a 
 trespass law for the purpose oP protecting game — or making privileged 
 certain kinds of wild creatures — is a demand to wliich no tolerance 
 should be given. There is nothing that would do more to sweeten 
 the breath of rural society, and pave the way for good and right feel- 
 ing amongst all classes in our agricultural districts, than the repeal of 
 the Game Laws." 
 
 Now the impossibility of dealing in a small way witli these 
 Gfame Laws is also fully illustrated by the fact that, after 
 all the inquiries and committees that we have had, nothing 
 has been done. 
 
 The fact that I have alluded to of the impossibility of 
 really diminishing the evils of the Game Laws by so-called 
 moderate reforms of them perhaps accounts for the fact that 
 BO little has been done to carry out the recommendations 
 adopted in the reports of either of the Committees of 1846 
 and 1873, and that that little has been practically useless. 
 My hon. friend the member for Linlithgow (Mr. McLagan) 
 is to be complimented upon the zeal and energy with which 
 he carried through his Game Law Amendment Act (Scot- 
 land), but I am euro he v/ould agree with me that he only 
 touched upon the fringe of the real question, useful as no 
 doubt his Act will be, in to some degree facilitating com- 
 pensation, and in transferring the tribunal from the justices 
 Kecommenda- (o the sheriffs. In regard to the recommendations of the 
 
 tions 01 the /^ • J 1 T 
 
 Parliament- Committees to which I have alluded, I will just mention the 
 tels.^°°^™'*" ^^^li^io^- of cumulative penalties. This was recommended 
 in both reports but remains untouched. Regarding rabbits 
 as vermin, as recommended in the report of 1873, nothing 
 has been done. The abominable system under which the 
 informer gets half the penalty —a gross injustice to the 
 accused, and a terrible temptation to the gamekeeper— this, 
 too, was recommended to be altered by both Committees, but
 
 33 
 
 remains untouclied. But, finally, I will give the House 
 the most extraordinary illustration of the impossibility of 
 obtaining any reform of the Game Laws that could pos- 
 sibly be imagined. Of course the House is well aware that 
 it is under the Night Poaching Act that the most severe — 
 I might add uurocious — sentences are inflicted. Seven 
 years* penal servitude is the penalty for taking a rabbit, 
 without the least pretence or show of violence committed or 
 intended, if at night. The Committee of 1846 reported in 
 favour of a mitigation of this law, but nothing was done. 
 The Committee of 1873, in a report drawn up by a member 
 of the Government (Mr. ^Vard Hunt), renewed the recom- 
 mendation, but nothing was done in the matter. "Well, last 
 year some excitement was produced by the fact that a 
 Scotch farmer was under this Act sentenced to imprison- 
 ment with hard labour for trying to snare a rabbit just out- 
 side his own hedge. 
 
 A Scotch member brought up a question on the subject, No hope from 
 and the Home Secretary said he was prepared to bring in Government, 
 a Bill to modify that law. He did bring in a Bill, declaring 
 that, when there was no evidence whatever that violence was 
 committed or was intended, that the punishment for night 
 poaching should be reduced to what it would have been if the 
 offence had been committed in the day time. I at once rose 
 and suggested to the right hon. gentleman that, however 
 desirable it might be thus to assist the Scotch farmers, that 
 the English farmers had every right to the same privilege, 
 and that he surely would not dream of passing a BiU for 
 Scotland which did not extend to England. After some 
 consultation^ the Lord Advocate frankly accepted that altera- 
 tion, and promised, if I would withdraw my opposition to 
 the second reading, that he would pledge himself to bring- 
 in a Bill extending the change to Great Britain, I was, 
 unfortunately, ill at that period, and had no opportunity of 
 watching exactly how the matter went, but I know, in the 
 first place, that this fairly moderate piece of legislation 
 was altered down to absolute nothingness and meaningless- 
 ness. It was provided, in the first place, that the poacher 
 must be alone, and that he must have no nets with him,
 
 34 
 
 so that it amonnted to this, that if he proved he was not a 
 poacher, he should only be punished as if he had been caught 
 poaching in the day time. But even this was too strong 
 for the game preservers, and the Bill was officially burked at 
 seven o'clock in the morning one day in August, 
 
 No doubt it may be said, when the Government saw it 
 had been reduced by their friends to so simple a matter, 
 they resolved to put it on one side, and to deal with the 
 matter in the Criminal Code Bill. But on examining that 
 Bill I find in it the same atrocious clause, and it is still 
 proposed that a man should be liable for seven years' trans- 
 portation for taking a rabbit at night. (Cheers). While 
 that clause remains in that Bill I promise it my most unmiti- 
 gated opposition, and I will stop short of nothing but that 
 never-to-be-mentioned horror of having my humble name 
 mentioned by you, sir. (Cheers and laughter.) 
 
 In fact the only important alteration in the law of late years 
 has been an alteration of the most aggravating severity, and 
 that is the Act of 1862, called the Poaching Prevention Act. 
 This Act did a great deal towards making game property, in 
 that it turned policemen into gamekeepers, while it actually 
 disregarded the vital principle of our jurisprudence, that a 
 man shall be deemed innocent until he is proved guilty. At 
 present any poor labourer wandering along the road with 
 a bag on his back may be stopped by any zealous police- 
 man, who can claim the right to search him in order to see 
 whether he has or has not game upon him. The Commis- 
 sioner of the Norfolk JSfeivs said — 
 
 "As I have seen and heard much of the evil of game preserving 
 I will add one or two facts of which I was reminded by my informant 
 in Suffolk, who has had large experience in game districts. He ascribed 
 much evil to the Poaching Prevention Act, by which policemen were 
 turned into gamekeepers, paid by the county and the State. This Act 
 has so operated that while game preserving is as rampant as ever, 
 gamekeepers are less and less in request, their places being supplied by 
 policemen. He assured me that a little while ago in the Field news- 
 paper he observed sixty advertisements by gamekeepers out of situa- 
 tions, and only two by gentlemen requiring gamekeepers." 
 
 Probably the audacity of class legislation was never mani- 
 fested in a more distinct manner than in this case, when, 
 having first confiscated the property of the people in the
 
 35 
 
 wild animals of the countrj?-, the country gentlemen then 
 forced the people to pay for the preservation of the stolen 
 property. (Cheers.; 
 
 Two propositions have been made under which the present Proposed 
 Game Laws might be abolished; one to make game property, ^ ^^S^s. 
 the other to j.»ii,SH a stringent trespass law. It is not worth 
 while to waste tune in discussing these propositions, as each 
 of them is simply a suggestion to renew the Game Laws 
 with all their evils under another name. To make game 
 property would simply be to repeat and enhance the injustice 
 of confiscating the property of the people in wild animals, 
 while the stringent trespass law is simply that which already 
 exists under the name of a Game Law ; in fact the Game 
 Law Code is nothing but a stringent trespass law. As I 
 have already said, if you want to reduce the evil you must 
 reduce the head of game. A much more valuable change 
 which has been suggested, is to remove ground game from Ground game, 
 the protection of the Acts, and to leave winged game only 
 under their protection. 
 
 I cannot accept the principle that ground game is the 
 
 only description which does damage ; immense harm is done 
 
 by winged game also. The Bishop of Manchester writes : — 
 
 " Ground game does most hurt to the farmer ; winged game does 
 most hurt to the peasantry." 
 
 I apprehend also that of the 10,000 men convicted annually, Winged game, 
 far more are victims to pheasants than to hares. Mr. 
 Ilammerton, of the Warwickshire Farmers' Club, declared 
 that he had heard farmers say they had had gamekeepers 
 hatching and increasing game for months on their farms, 
 and when they began to peck their food and were not able 
 to fly, they were taken in baskets and set down in the middle 
 of the fields to eat corn. Mr. Fisher, a Scotch farmer, 
 said before the Committee that 
 
 "A man in the highlands had his entire crop destroyed by grouse." 
 
 While admitting that the damage done by ground game is 
 incomparably the greater, my objection to this change is a 
 fatal one — viz., that it is impossible to make any legal 
 distinction between different kinds of game. It would be
 
 36 
 
 clearly impossible to discriminate whether a man was in 
 search, of ground game, unprotected b}' the law, or 
 pheasants, which still enjoyed protection as game. The 
 landlord will be sure to say that the man is after winged 
 game, the trespasser will declare he is after ground game, and 
 while there is a great head of game left on the land, not 
 only will the evil to the farmer be undiminished, but the 
 evil of poaching and of trespassing will be neither dim- 
 inished nor done away with. We say simply, to abolish 
 the Grame Laws is the only way to mitigate the evil. 
 
 l>ow this is my indictment against the Grame Law system. 
 It is a strong one ; I believe it is a true and unexaggerated 
 one. I have carried the House through the various classes 
 affected by the law up to the whole of the community. I 
 cannot hope that I have converted the House to my views. 
 The House will perhaps excuse me for saying that if there be 
 any subject in this House on which it could hardly be expected 
 to exhibit absolute impartiality, it would be on one relating 
 to sport and the Game Laws. But if I have not converted 
 them, and if we cannot get rid of these laws from within, we 
 must seek assistance from without, I find an historical 
 parallel which encourages me in this hope. "We are told 
 that many hundred years ago the Balearic Islanders were 
 overrun and eaten up by rabbits, which tould not be slain 
 by the natives because they were sacred animals. It is 
 interesting to the philosophic observer to notice the continuity 
 of certain religious ideas. The rabbit is as sacred now as it 
 was before the Christian era. Well, the Balearic Islanders 
 found they must get rid of the rabbits, because rabbits 
 and religion together would have been their ruin. (Laughter.) 
 We are told that they sent to Rome for soldiers to do 
 their business, who had no religious scruples on the subject. 
 It is what I propose to do. But the Rome to which we shall 
 have to send is not further removed than our agricultural 
 districts, and the soldiers who will do our business will be 
 the enfranchised agricultural labourers. (Cheers.) 
 
 I beg leave to move, sir, " That in the opinion of this 
 House the existing Game Law Code, maintained for the 
 purpose of preserving certain wild animals for sport, is unjust
 
 37 
 
 CO the farmer, demoralising to the labourer, and injurious to 
 the whole community, and should therefore be abolished." 
 
 At the close of the debate, 
 
 Mr. Taylor said a few words by way of reply. He Reply, 
 observed that after the great length at which he had troubled 
 the House, he would not have said a word in reply, had it not 
 been for the special challenge of the hon. member for Berks 
 (Mr. Walter.) That hon. gentleman had entered into 
 historical and antiquarian research, and had endeavoured to 
 trace to the Danish ancestry of the inhabitants of Leicester, 
 the reasons which had made their representative the special 
 friend of the poacher. He must say that if the poachers 
 regarded him as their friend, it must be upon the curious 
 ground that he proposed to destroy their industrj^, and to 
 render their profession impossible for the future. He (Mr. 
 Taylor) remembered that some years ago, a petition was 
 forwarded to him from Leicester for presentation, against the 
 Game Laws, and he was informed at the time that several 
 well-known professional poachers had declined to sign the 
 petition on the ground that the abolition of the Game Laws 
 would be the destruction of their industry. The hon. gentleman 
 the member for Berks had pointedly asked him. Who could 
 have a better right to kill the game than those who paid for 
 its support ? To this he would say, in tlie first place, that part 
 of his charge was that those who claimed property m the 
 game were often not those who really paid for its maintenance ; 
 but beyond this,he would remind the hon. gentleman that there 
 were many in (and more out of) that House who did not hold 
 with the claim of landowners to do in all respects what they 
 liked with their land ; who held that land was not the proper 
 subject for absolute proprietorship ; that in fact it was held 
 in trust for the advantage of the whole community ; and that 
 if it could be shown that in any respect its management was 
 inconsistent with the public advantage, ground sufficient 
 had been shown for change. He congratulated the House 
 and the country upon the evidence that this debate had shown 
 of the great progress that had been made, both in the House 
 and out of it, in regard to this question— hares and rabbits bad 
 been given up on all sides. He said " out of it '' in considera-
 
 38 
 
 tion of the number of members wlio had declared that they 
 would vote for his resolution, although not agreeing in its 
 terms, thus showing most satisfactorily the importance that 
 their constituencies attached to the abolition of the Game 
 Laws. (Cheers.) 
 
 THE DIVISION. 
 A.YES, 87 ; ISToES, 1 60. 
 Foe, Mr. Taylor's Motion. 
 Acland, Sir Thomas Dyke 40IIarrison, Chas. (Bewdley) 
 Allen, W. Shepherd HarrisoD, J. Forts. (Kilmli.) 
 
 Anderson, George Havelock, Sir Henry 
 
 Balfour, Sir Geo. (Kinerdnsh.) Hill, T. Eowley (Worcester) 
 5Barclay, James W.(Forfarsh.) Hopwood, Charles Henry 
 
 Barran, John 
 Bell, Isaac Lowthian 
 Biggar, Joseph Gillis 
 Blake, Thomas 
 lOBright, Jacob (Manchester) 
 
 45Howard, E. Stffd. (Cumb, E.) 
 Howard, G. J. (Cumb. E.) 
 Hutchinson, John Dyson 
 Jeiikius, David J. (Penryn) 
 Johnstone, Sir H. (Scarb.) 
 
 Bright, Rt. Hn. John (Bmgn.)50Kenealy, Dr. 
 
 Brogden, Alexander Lawrence, Sir J. C. (Lamb.) 
 
 Brown, Alexdr. H. (Wenlock) Lawson, Sir Wilfrid 
 
 Bruce, Lord Charles (Marl.) 
 ISljurt, Thomas 
 
 Callan, Philip 
 
 Cameron, Charles (Glasgow) 
 
 Chadwick, David 
 
 (Chamberlain, Joseph 
 20Chambers, Sir Thomas 
 
 Courtney, Leonard Henry 
 
 Cowen, Joseph (Newcastle) 
 
 Davies, David (Cardigan) 
 
 Dilke, Sir Charles Wentworth 
 25Dundas, Hon. John Charles 
 
 Earp, Thomas 
 
 Edge, Samuel Eathbone 
 
 Fawcett, Henry 
 
 Finigan, James Lysaght 
 SOFitzmaurice, Lord Edmond 
 
 Forster, Sir Chas. (Walsall) 
 
 Fothergill, Richard 
 
 Fry, Lewis 
 
 Gladstone, W. H. (Whitby) 
 35Gordon, Sir Alex.(Abrdn.E.) 
 
 Gourley, Edward Temperley 
 
 Grant, Andrew (Leith) 
 
 Grosvenor, Lord Richard 
 
 Harcourt, SirW. Y. (Oxf . City) 
 
 Lea, Thomas (Donegal) 
 Lusk, Sir Andrew 
 
 55M'Carthy, Justin (Lngfrd.) 
 MacdonaJd, Alexander 
 M' Arthur, Alexander (Leic.) 
 M' Arthur, Wm. (Lambeth) 
 M'Clure, Sir Thomas 
 
 eOM'Kenna, Sir Joseph Neal 
 Mellor, Thomas W. 
 Morley, Samuel 
 Mundella, Anthony John 
 Muntz, Philip Henry 
 
 65Noel, Ernest (Dumfries) 
 Nolan, Major 
 O'Donoghue, The 
 O'Shaughnessy, Richard 
 Otway, Arthur John 
 
 TOPalmer, George (Reading) 
 Pennington, Frederick 
 Philips, R. Needham 
 Richard, Henry 
 Roberts, John 
 
 YoSamuelson, Henry (Frome) 
 Sheridan, Henry B. 
 Simon, Mr. Serjeant 
 Stewart, James (Greenock)
 
 30 
 
 Sullivan, Alexander M. Wadcly, Samuel Danks 
 
 80Tennant, Charles (Glasc^ow) 85Waterlow, Sir Sydney H. 
 
 Torrens, W. T. M'CuUagli Weddorburn, Sir David 
 
 Tracy, Hon. F. S. A. Hnby.— Williams, W. (Denbigh) 
 
 Trevelyan, George Otto 
 
 Tellers for the Ayes, Mr. P. A. Taylor and Sir George 
 Campbell. 
 
 Against. 
 
 Agnew, Eobort Vans 
 Allcroft, John Derby 
 Anstruther, SirW. (L'k.) 
 Arkwright, A. P.(Derby,N.) 
 5Arkwright, F. (Dorbj^ E.) 
 Ashbury, James Lloyd 
 Barclay, A. C. (Taunton) 
 Barrington, Yiscount 
 Bates, Edward 
 
 lOBateson, Sir Thomas 
 
 Beach, Et. Hon, Sir M. H. 
 
 (Glo. E.) 
 Beach, W. W. Bramst. 
 
 (Hants, N.) 
 Bentinck, Rt. Hon. G. C. 
 
 (Whit'n) 
 Beresford, Ld.C. (Waterfrd.) 
 
 ISBirkbeck, Edward 
 Birley, Hugh 
 Blackburne, Col. Jn.Ireland 
 Boord, Thomas William 
 Bousfield, Colonel 
 
 20Bowen, James Be van 
 Bowyer, Sir George 
 Brise, Colonel Euggles 
 Broadley, Wm. H. Harrison 
 Bulwer, James E. 
 
 25Burghley, Lord 
 
 Buxton, Sir Eobert Jacob 
 Campbell,Lrd.C.(Argyllsh.) 
 Cartwright,Frf X. (Nthmptn. ) 
 Cecil, Lord Eustace H. B. G. 
 
 3 Cliaplin, Hy. (Lincolnsh. M. ) 
 Colebrooke, Sir Thomas Ed. 
 Cordes, Thomas 
 Corry, James Porter (Blfst.) 
 Cortauld, George 
 
 35Crichton, Yiscount 
 
 Cross, Et. Hon. Ed. A. 
 (Lane, S.W.) 
 
 Cuninghame, SirWm.(Ayr) 
 Dalkeith, Earl of 
 Dalrymple, Charles 
 
 40Davenport, W. Bromley 
 Denison,W.E.(Nottinghm.) 
 Dickson, Major A. G. (Dover) 
 Dyke, Sir William Hart 
 Edmondstone, Adm. SirWm . 
 
 45Egerton, Hon. Alg. Fulko 
 (Lane, S.) 
 Elphinstone, Sir Jas. D. H. 
 Emlyn, Yiscount 
 Errington, George 
 Estcourt, George Sotheron 
 
 50Evans, Thomas William 
 Folkestone, Yiscount 
 Forester, Cecil Theod. Weld 
 Freshfield, Charles fCayo 
 Garfit, Thomas 
 
 55Gathorne-Hardy, Hon. A. 
 (Cant.) 
 Gibson, Et. Hon. Edward 
 Giffard, Sir Hard. Stanley 
 Gilpin, Sir Eichd. Thomas 
 Goldney, Gabriel 
 
 eOGordon, William (Chelsea) 
 Gregory, George B. 
 Hall, Alexander William 
 Halsey, Thomas Frederick 
 Hamilton, Et. Hon. Lord Ct. 
 (Midx.) 
 
 G5Hamilton,Marq.of(Donegl.) 
 Hamilton,Hon.E.B.(Berw.) 
 Hamond, Charles Frederic 
 Hanburj^, Eobert William 
 Hay, Et. Hon. Sir J. C. D. 
 
 TOHerbert, Hon. S. (Wilton) 
 Hicks, Edward 
 Hildyard, T. B. Thoroton 
 Hill, Alex. S. (Staffrd. AY.)
 
 
 40 
 
 Holland, SirH. T. (Midliurst) Eidle j, SirM. W. (Nrthbd . N. ) 
 
 75Holme,sdale, Viscount 120Eitcliie, Charles Thomson 
 
 Hope, Alex. J. E. Beresfd. Kodwell, Benj. Bridges H. 
 
 Isaac, Saul Bound, James 
 
 Johnson, John G. (Exeter) Sackville, Sackville Gr. S. 
 
 Johnstone, Hope (Dumfries) Salt, Thomas 
 
 SOJoUiffe, Hon. Sydney 125Sandon, Viscount 
 
 Kavanagh, Arthur MacM. Sclater-Booth, Et. Hon. Gr. 
 
 Kennaway, Sir John Henry Scott, M. D. (Sussex, E.) 
 Kingscote, Colonel Selwin-Ibbetson, Sir H. J. 
 
 Knowles, Thomas Severne, John Edmund 
 
 85Learmonth, Alexander ISOShute, General 
 
 Legh,Wm. John (Ohesh. E.) Smith, Abel (Herts) 
 Lindsay, Col. E. L. (Berks,) Smith, S. Geo. (Aylesbury) 
 Lloyd, Sampson (Plymouth) Smith,Et. Hon. W.H. (West.) 
 Lloyd, T. E. (Cardiganshire) Somerset, Lord Henry E. C. 
 
 90Lopes, Sir Massey 135Spinks, Mr. Serjeant 
 
 Lowther, Et. Hon. J. (York) Stanhope, Hon. E. (Line. M.) 
 Macartney, J. W. EUison Stanhope, W. T. W. S. 
 
 Mackintosh, Charles Eraser (York, W. E.) 
 
 M'Garel-Hogg, Sir James Stanley,Et. Hon. Col. Ereclk, 
 
 95Manners,Et.Hon. Lord Jolm Stanton, Alfred John 
 Marjoribanks, Sir Dudley C.140Stewart, Mark J. (Wigton) 
 Marten, A. George (Cam. B.) Storer, George 
 Master, Thos. Wm. Chester Talbot, Chris. E. M. (Glam.) 
 Merewether, Charles George Talbot, John G. (Oxf. Univ. ) 
 lOOMiles, Sir Philip John Wm. Taylor, Et. Hon. Col. 
 Mills, Sir C. H. (Kent, W.) (Dublin Co.) 
 
 Monk, Charles James 145Tennant, Eobert (Leeds) 
 
 Montgomerie, E. (Ayrshire) Thynne, Lord Henry Ered. 
 Moray, Colonel Drummond Tremayne, J. (Cornwall, E.) 
 lOSMowbray, Et. Hon. J. E. Wait, William Killigiew 
 
 Naghten, Tieut. -Colonel Walker, T. Eades (Wore. E.) 
 
 Newport, Viscount 150 Walsh, Hon. Arthur 
 
 North, Colonel Watson, Et. Hon. William 
 
 Northcote, Et. Hn. Sir S. H. Wheelhouse, William S. J. 
 llOPaget, Eichard Horner Whitley, Edward 
 
 Parker,Lt.-Col. W. (Suff.W.) Wilmot, Sir H. (Derbysh. S.) 
 Pell, Albert 155 Wilmot, Sir J. E. (Warw. S.) 
 
 Pemberton, Edward Jjeigh Winn, Eowland (Line. N.) 
 
 Phipps, Pickering Wynn, C. W. Wms. (Mont.) 
 
 lloPim, Captain Bedford Yarmouth, Earl of 
 
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