Our attention has been attracted to the doings of an association which has for its professed object the abolition of all game laws, and which has recently opened a new campaign in Scotland, under the leadership of the chief magistrate of Edinburgh, and one of the representatives of the city. Of course the construction of such societies is no longer a mystery to any one; and that under our notice appears to be got up on the most approved pattern, and with all the newest improvements. A staff of active officials directs its movements, and collects funds—lecturers, pamphleteers, newspaper editors are paid or propitiated. From the raw material of Mr Bright's blue-books the most exaggerated statements and calculations of the most zealous witnesses are carefully picked out, and worked up into a picture, which is held up to a horrified public as a true representation of the condition of the rural districts; and the game laws become, in the hands of such artists, a monster pestilence, enough to have made the hair of Pharaoh himself to stand on end. It is not to be wondered at if some, who have not had the opportunity of investigating for themselves the effects of these laws, have been misled by the bold ingenuity of the professed fabricators of grievances; but it is a fact which we shall again have occasion to notice, that they have made but little impression on the tenant farmers. Of the few members of that class who have taken an active share in the agitation, we doubt if there is one who could prove a loss from game on any year's crop to the value of a five-pound note.[2] The fact is, that while no one will deny the existence of individual cases of hardship from the operation of the game laws, you will hear comparatively little about them among those who are represented as groaning under their intolerable burden. If you would learn the weight of the grievance, you must go to the burghs and town-councils; and there—among small grocers and dissenting clergymen, who would be puzzled to distinguish a pheasant from a bird-of-paradise—you will be made acquainted with the extent of the desolation of these "fearful wildfowl:" from them you will learn the true shape and dimensions of "the game-law incubus," which, as one orator of the tribe tells us, "is gradually changing the surface of this once fertile land into a desert."
But while we are willing to allow for a certain leaven of misled sincerity among the supporters of this association, it is evident that, among its most active and influential leaders, the relief of the farmer or the relaxation of penal laws is not the real object. We shall show from their own writings and speeches the most convincing proof that they contemplate far more extensive and fundamental changes than the mere abolition of the game laws. There is not, indeed, much congruity or system in the opinions which we shall have to quote; but in one point it will be seen that they all concur—a vindictive hostility to the possessors of land, and an eager desire to abridge or destroy the advantages attached, or supposed to be attached, to that description of property. Thus the system of entails—the freedom of real property from legacy and probate duty—the landlord's preferable lien for the rent of his land, figure in the debates of the abolitionist orators, along with other topics equally relevant to the game laws, as oppressive burdens on the industry of the country. The system of the tenure of land, also, is pronounced to be a crying injustice; and one gentleman modestly insists on the necessity of a law for compelling the landlord to make payment to his tenant at the expiry of every lease for any increase in the value of the farm during his occupation. The author of an "Essay on the Evils of Game-Laws," which the association rewarded with their highest premium, and which, therefore, we are fairly entitled to take as an authorised exposition of their sentiments, thus enlarges on "the withering and ruinous thraldom" to which the farmers are subjected by a system of partial legislation.
"No individual," he complains, "of this trade has ever risen to importance and dignity in the state. While merchants of every other class, lawyers, and professional men of every other class, have often reached the highest honours which the crown has to bestow, no farmer has ever yet attained even to a seat in the legislature, or to any civic title of distinction; uncertain as the trade is naturally, and harassed and weighed down by those sad enactments the game laws, to be enrolled among the class of farmers is now tantamount to saying, that you belong to a caste which is for ever excluded from the rewards of fair and honourable ambition."—(Mr Cheine Shepherd's Essay. Edinburgh, 1847.)
The association of the game laws with the scorns which "patient merit of the unworthy takes," is at least ingenious. We confess, with Mr Cheine Shepherd, that the aspect of the times is wofully discouraging to any hope that a coronet, "or even the lowest order of knighthood," will in our days become the usual reward for skill
"In small-boned lambs, the horse-hoe, or the drill."
We cannot flatter him with the prospect of becoming a Cincinnatus; or that we shall live to see the time when muck shall make marquisates as well as money; and perhaps the best advice, under the circumstances, we can tender him, is that which the old oracle gave to certain unhappy shepherds in Virgil's time—
"Pascite, ut ante, boves, pueri—submittite tauros."
Absurd, however, as the complaint of this ambitious Damon appears, it indicates at least the extent of change which he and his patrons of the association think they may justly demand. It is not, then, redress of game-law grievances they aim at, but an indefinite change in the social and political system of the country. If any one doubts this, let him read the following extract from the address of Mr Wilson of Glassmount:—
"Much organic change must, however, precede the reforms for which they were now agitating. The suffrage must be extended.—(applause)—and, above all, the voters must be protected in the exercise of their functions by the ballot; for, in a country where so great a disparity existed between the social condition of the electoral body, parliamentary election, as now conducted under a system of open voting, was only a delusion and a mockery."—(Caledonian Mercury, Feb. 12, 1849.)
From such an authority we cannot expect much amity towards the aristocracy, who, he says, "it is notorious, are, in point of political, scientific, and general knowledge, far behind those employed in commerce and manufactures."[3] He compares the present state of Britain with "the condition of France anterior to her first revolution, when the ancient noblesse possessed the same exclusive privileges which are still enjoyed by the aristocracy of this country—and, among the rest, a game law, which was administered with so much severity, that it is admitted on all hands to have been the chief cause of that convulsion which shook Europe to its centre."[4]