[346] The farmers were usually sympathetic to poaching as a habit, but it was not so much from a perception of its economic tendencies, as from a general resentment against the Game Laws.
[347] See Cobbett; Letters to Peel; Political Register; and Dr. Hunt’s evidence before the Select Committee on Criminal Commitments and Convictions, 1827.
[348] A manifesto was published in a Bath paper in reply to this Act; it is quoted by Sydney Smith, Essays, p. 263: ‘Take Notice.—We have lately heard and seen that there is an act passed, and whatever poacher is caught destroying the game is to be transported for seven years.—This is English Liberty!
‘Now we do swear to each other that the first of our company that this law is inflicted on, that there shall not be one gentleman’s seat in our country escape the rage of fire. The first that impeaches shall be shot. We have sworn not to impeach. You may think it a threat, but they will find it a reality. The Game Laws were too severe before. The Lord of all men sent these animals for the peasants as well as for the prince. God will not let his people be oppressed. He will assist us in our undertaking, and we will execute it with caution.’
[349] The Archbishop of Canterbury prosecuted a man under this Act in January 1831, for rescuing a poacher from a gamekeeper without violence, on the ground that he thought it his duty to enforce the provisions of the Act.
[350] House of Lords, September 19, 1831.
[351] A magistrate wrote to Sir R. Peel in 1827 to say that many magistrates sent in very imperfect returns of convictions, and that the true number far exceeded the records.—Webb, Parish and County, p. 598 note.
[352] Brougham Speeches, vol. ii. p. 373.
[353] Political Register, March 29, 1823, vol. xxiv. p. 796.
[354] Select Committee on Criminal Commitments and Convictions, 1827, p. 30.