[331] Leckie’s Historical Survey of the foreign affairs of Great Britain, Part I, page 57, &c.
[333] Leckie, as before, p. 66.
[334] Blackstone iv. 408. Neal Hist. Pur. I. 1.
[335] Blackstone iv. 409.—Our Game Laws are not only exceedingly detested, by those of the middle as well as lower orders, throughout the country, (which constitute the major part of the nation,) but seem also to be among the most grievous and disgraceful of all our present laws. In no view can they be deemed respectable or defensible. Nor is the conduct of our magistrates perhaps ever more unseemly or disreputable than in the unfeeling, cruel, and relentless rigour with which they put these vile laws in execution. In nothing probably more than in this does our present state resemble that of France before the revolution. The Game Laws there were then intolerably severe and grievous, and enforced by the magistrates with unrelenting and diabolical rigour; so that they used to fill even the very Gallies with their hapless victims: all which recoiled with vengeance upon them and their abettors, the privileged orders, in the dreadful change which ensued. Those laws no longer exist in that country: but a recent traveller, (Pinkney,) informs us, “that though there are now no game laws in France, there is a decency and moderation in the lower orders, which answer the same purpose. No one presumes to shoot game, except on land of which he is the proprietor or tenant.”—No where in England are these laws supposed to be more grievously felt than in Norfolk; of which a popular and respectable author of the present day speaks as follows—“What is denominated Game is very plentiful is this county. The arable lands affording both food and cover, and the gentry, being particularly attached to the amusement of sporting, have recourse to the strong arm of the law for its preservation. This tenacity on the part of the landholders, producing covetous desires in the tenants, is a strong inducement to poaching, and the source of numberless disagreements, which too frequently terminate in suits at law. Hence they are oppressive to one party and disgraceful to the other. The various statutes, called ‘the Game Laws,’ are justly deemed the opprobrium of the English code; and in no county perhaps are those statutes acted upon with greater rigor than they usually are in Norfolk. The endless litigations upon this despicable point have lately become the subject of theatrical ridicule; and this county has on the occasion been made the butt of dramatic satire. “Searchum, get warrants immediately, for seizing guns, nets, and snares; let every dog in the parish be collected for hanging to-morrow morning. Give them a taste for Norfolk discipline.” Happy would it be for the country, if ridicule, as reason has hitherto failed, should be able to induce the legislature to abrogate laws, which, as they were made to support an assumed claim, can only be continued in force to protect an usurped right.” [Beauties of England v. xi. p. 90, &c.]
It is most disgusting to men of sound and liberal minds to hear with what complacency, selfgratulation, as well as selfimportance, the magistrates, at the convivial meetings of the gentry, will be sometimes expatiating on the rigour of their proceedings against the transgressors of the game laws, and describing how effectually they curb and keep in awe the farmers, and trounce to their utter undoing some of the most active among the lower order of poachers. Such a conduct is nothing less than a publishing of their own shame, and a boasting of their own misdoings; and had they expanded and reflecting minds, or any minds at all, they would blush for such a conduct, and carefully and studiously refrain from it, as well as from all manner of excess in their proceedings against poachers, many of whom with their luckless families have been utterly ruined by them. Some of those ill-fated culprits have perished in prison, after long and rigorous confinement: one of whom, named Saunders, died miserably in goal, after a six years incarceration, who probably was as well bred as some of his relentless judges; on which occasion the following lines were composed:
“Epitaph on Nathaniel Saunders, gentleman:
“Nat! thou’st escap’d just in the nick of time!
Thine was a barbarous and a bloody crime!
How long confin’d?—six years—that’s only fair;
What was his crime? the scoundrel kill’d a hare!”
[338a] Blackstone, iv. 410.
[338b] Ibid, 411.
[340] Not a few of the most high-spirited and warlike withdrew into foreign parts; some sailed to the Mediterranean, and found at Constantinople a ready protector in the emperor of the east, who united them to the Barangi, or battle-ax guards, as some of their countrymen had been long before. [See Andrews, vol. 1.]
[341a] Blackstone, vol. 1. Robinson’s Sermon on Slavery, and appendix. Sullivan’s Lectures, 258.