The Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository, Volume 2 (of 2) / Of General Information upon Every Subject Appertaining to the Sports of the Field

by William Taplin

POACHERS

—are those determined destructive nocturnal depredators, by whom the game is so shamefully reduced in opposition to all LAW, and defiance of all ORDER, from one extremity of the kingdom to the other. This head cannot be better elucidated, than by transcribing literally, from the recent work of a writer of much celebrity, his judicious remarks upon the subject.

"It is, perhaps, among that description of persons well known by the name of poachers, that the greater number of those are trained to rapine, who infest every rural neighbourhood with their petty thefts, and whose dexterity almost bids defiance to precaution. Accustomed, in the ensnaring of game, to the secresy of fraud, and committing their depredations amidst the silence of night, those horrors, and that consequent dread, which frequently deters from the commission of great offences, gradually lose their effect. Solitude and darkness, which have wherewithal to appal the human mind in its first deviations into guilt, are divested of their terror in those pilfering pursuits; and the consequence is sufficiently well known to all, who, in the capacity of magistrates, are called to sit in judgment on the delinquency of public offenders. It is to this initiation they ascribe their subsequent enormities.

"When guilt, however venal, becomes, by repetition, familiar to the mind, it is not in the power of the ignorant and uneducated to restrain its excesses; they cannot arrest their career of iniquity; they cannot chalk out the line of wrong beyond which they will not pass. Confining their first nocturnal excursions to the snaring of HARES, and netting of PARTRIDGES, whenever they have a less booty than usual, they are tempted to compensate the deficiency by petty plunder of some other kind, and the log-pile, the stack, the fold, the hen-roost, all in turn, pay tribute to the prowling vagabond, who fills as he can that void in his "capacious bag," which has been left by his want of success as a POACHER.

"The great evil is, that a culprit of this class, feeling no compunction in the early stage of his guilt, proceeds carelessly to a state of the most complete degeneracy. Game is a species of property of which he has so indistinct a conception, that he scarcely thinks he has committed a moral injustice in the various stratagems by which he has contrived to obtain it; he sees not that the claim of a stranger is better than his; he knows not whence that absolute right in another to that which he has taken is derived; his companions, to whom he recounts his manœuvres, are more likely to applaud his cunning than to reprove his crime. Thus the remorse of conscience being but slight and feeble in the outset, the wretch is encouraged by degrees to trample on the laws with greater boldness, and at last suffers as a FELON."

That these facts are fairly stated, and the natural inferences judiciously drawn, must be candidly and universally admitted. Previous, however, to the conclusive remarks requisite under this head, it becomes directly applicable to introduce a few passages from another writer of equal eminence, who, in his animadversion upon the well-founded principle of the GAME LAWS, observes, "that, in a highly cultivated, well-peopled country, no animal can properly be considered as wild; all are supported by the property and labour of those who cultivate the soil. Some, from their peculiar instincts, are, indeed, less capable than others of being appropriated, and therefore, like lands uninclosed, are held as a joint property. But he who has no land, and consequently contributes nothing to their maintenance, is no more entitled to any use of them, than the inhabitant of one parish is to a right of commonage on the waste lands of another; and he who chuses to reside in a town, and to keep his property in money, has no more a pretence to seize to his own use a HARE, or a PARTRIDGE, than a sheep or a goose, from him who has chosen to vest his property in land. In the former, as in the latter case, he ought to tempt the owner to sell what is wanted."

Thus much is introduced from the speculative opinions of respectable writers upon the political and equitable basis of the GAME LAWS, which every rational observer, and good subject, will probably admit ought to be obeyed; although the great and infinite body of POACHERS, and that much greater infinity their ABETTORS, seem to be of a direct opposite opinion. However just, proper, and political, such laws may have been in their formation, and laudable in their continuance, little reliance can be placed upon the deceptive expectation of a reduction in the number of POACHERS, sanctioned and supported, as they are, by thousands in the Metropolis, and the middle classes of people in every CITY, TOWN, and VILLAGE, from one extremity of the Island to the other. If there is one of his Majesty's subjects so weak or inexperienced, as to suppose any one species of game is difficult to be obtained, he must be deplorably ignorant in the common occurrences of life, and requires to be informed, that the wholesale art and trade of poaching is carried on almost "as public as the noonday sun" during the whole of the season; and no one of that commercial and opulent body in the city, or epicure in the suburbs, sits down without game at his table whenever he pleases to order it: it is not the business of a steward, butler, or housekeeper, to expostulate upon what may be immediately obtained for MONEY, with a consolatory verification of the school-boy's well-known adage, that "one good turn deserves another;" and money in one hand can invariably procure game for the other.

There have always been two opinions held respecting the policy and prudence of the Game Laws, between two classes of people equally opposite to each other, the HIGHEST and the lowest; in support of which, it has been the persevering practice of the former, to enact laws for the protection of what they conceive their RIGHT; and the latter have been as invariably engaged (from one generation to another) in devising plans to counteract and undermine it: thus the cunning of one is engaged in a perpetual war with the POWER of the other, and most probably centuries only can ascertain the victory. Here the eye of impartiality will naturally advert to a passage from a writer lately quoted who is of opinion, that "a person having no land, and who chooses to keep his property in money, has no more right to a HARE or PARTRIDGE, than he has to the sheep or goose, from him who has chosen to vest his property in LAND." This writer, probably, in his hasty zeal to exalt the LANDED interest above its proper weight in the scale of WEALTH, had totally forgotten (or never knew) that great national depositary of immensity, called the Bank of England, situate in the City of London; the millions eternally in motion through the medium of COMMERCE, and moving in all directions, to every quarter of the globe; as well as the East and West India possessions, to an extent of riches beyond conception.

All these, to gratify the self-importance of the holders of a little land, the learned writer had found it convenient to bury in oblivion. Sir Roger de Coverley would most probably have said, (could he have been at this moment consulted upon the subject,) "Much may be said on BOTH sides." In saying which, he would have spoken wisely; for it cannot be conceived, that every individual of the infinity of STOCK-HOLDERS, who loyally place an implicit faith in the stability of Government, and embark all their property to support it, (in many instances from FIVE to FIFTY or a HUNDRED THOUSAND pounds each,) does not feel himself equally affected with the appetites of a GENTLEMAN, as he who possesses 100l. a year in LAND; and not feeling more disposed to sacrifice at the shrine of SELF-DENIAL than his neighbour, finds it necessary to avail himself of all the comforts and advantages to be derived from his MONEY, that the other does from his LAND; under which candid and impartial consideration it is fair to conclude, that so long as there shall be a natural propensity to good living, and the delicacies which Providence has so plentifully bestowed; so long as the monied THOUSANDS of the Metropolis shall incline to believe they are entitled to a participation; and so long as GAME shall be bred, and human degeneracy in the lower classes of society continue; so long will POACHERS continue undiminished, in opposition to every means that the utmost limits of human wisdom can suggest for their extirpation.