To chase the deer with hawk and hound
Earl Percy took his way,
down to this present year of grace, when Conan Doyle's archer sings:
So we'll drink all together
To the grey goose feather,
And the land where the grey goose flew.
The pomp and dignity of the chase, its pursuit by the highest clergy and the sad result of want of skill by an archbishop are quaintly disclosed in the trial of the Archbishop of Canterbury for accidentally killing a game-keeper instead of a deer in the forest of Bramshill in the year 1621, as reported at length in Vol. II. of Cobbett's State Trials.
The right in the crown to all wild game, thus claimed and established in England, became part of the common law, and was inherited by the American colonies; and thus wild game in our Republic became the property of the people, and the duty of its care and protection fell upon the different States of the Republic, and in the territories upon Congress.
It is unnecessary to enumerate the different game laws and the various cruel judgments entered therein in the English courts, or to refer to the many essays and orations written and delivered against the game laws of the various European States. They met the condemnation alike of philanthropists, statesmen and poets. Charles Kingsley wrote in 1848, on behalf of the people, the bold and pathetic song:
The merry brown hares came leaping
Over the crest of the hill.
It defended the poacher lad, but lost for the writer his lawn sleeves.
The great distinction to be ever borne in mind between the game laws of Europe and those of America is, that the former were passed for the protection of game for a class, while the laws of a republic are passed for the preservation of game for the use of all the people. The former encountered the hostility of all the people save the aristocracy; the latter should obtain the approbation of all the people, rich and poor, for they are passed and maintained for the good of the people at large.
The value of the fish and game to the people of the State of Maine is greater and brings into the State more money than its hay crop or its potato crop. The value of a mountain stream is nothing except as it may water people or kine. Stock and protect that river by suitable laws, and the fishing privileges may be rented for an annual rental that will pay all the taxes of every county through which it runs. Yet often it is that the inhabitant of that county complains of the injustice of preventing him from taking fish therein at his pleasure at any season of the year.