Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

Your lean Cassius, on the contrary, has all the pugnacity of a terrier. He yelps at every body and every thing, is at perpetual warfare with the whole of animated nature, and will not be quieted even by dint of much kicking. The only chance you have of relieving yourself from his everlasting yammering and impertinence, is to throw him an unpicked bone, wherewith he will retreat in double-quick time to the kennel. And of a truth the number of excellent bones which are sacrificed to the terriers of this world, is absolutely amazing. Society in general will do a great deal for peace; and much money is doled out, far less for the sake of charity, than as the price of a stipulated repose.

It remains, however, to be seen whether Mr Bright, under any circumstances, will be quiet. We almost doubt it. In the course of his stentorial and senatorial career, he has more than once, to borrow a phrase from Boxiana, had his head put into chancery; and some of his opponents, Mr Ferrand for example, have fists that smite like sledge-hammers. But Friend John is a glutton in punishment; and though with blackened eyes and battered lips, is nevertheless at his post in time. The best pugilists in England do not know what to make of him. He never will admit that he is beaten, nor does he seem to know when he has enough. It is true that at every round he goes down before some tremendous facer or cross-buttock, or haply performs the part of Antæus in consequence of the Cornish hug. No matter – up he starts, and though rather unsteady on his pins, and generally groggy in his demeanour, he squares away at his antagonist, until night terminates the battle, and the drab flag, still flaunting defiance, is visible beneath the glimpses of the maiden moon.

At present, Mr Bright's senatorial exertions appear to be directed towards the abolition of the Game laws. Early in 1845, and before the remarkable era of conversion which must ever render that year a notorious one in the history of political consistency, he moved for and obtained a select committee of the House to inquire into the operation of these laws. Mr Bright's speech upon that occasion was, in some respects, a sensible one. We have no wish to withhold from him his proper meed of praise; and we shall add, that the subject which he thus virtually undertook to expiscate, was one in every way deserving of the attention of the legislature. Of all the rights of property which are recognised by the English law, that of the proprietor or occupier of the land to the feræ naturæ or game upon it, is the least generally understood, and the worst defined. It is fenced by, and founded upon, statutes which, in the course of time, have undergone considerable modification and revision; and the penalties attached to the infringement of it are, in our candid opinion, unnecessarily harsh and severe. Further, there can be no doubt, that in England the vice of poaching, next to that of habitual drinking, has contributed most largely to fill the country prisons. Instances are constantly occurring of ferocious assault, and even murder, arising from the affrays between gamekeepers and poachers; nor does it appear that the statutory penalties have had the effect of deterring many of the lower orders from their violent and predatory practices. On these points, we think an inquiry, with a view to the settlement of the law on a humane and equitable footing, was highly proper and commendable; nor should we have said a single word in depreciation of the labours of Mr Bright, had he confined himself within proper limits. Such, however, is not the case.

An abridgement of, or rather extracts from, the voluminous evidence which was taken before that select committee, has been published by a certain Richard Griffiths Welford, Esq., barrister at law, and member of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. With this gentleman hitherto, it is our misfortune or our fault that we have had no practical acquaintance; and judging from the tone, humour, and temper of the text remarks which are scattered throughout the volume, and the taste of the foot-notes appended, we do not see any reason to covet exuberant intimacy for the future. The volume is prefaced by a letter from Mr John Bright to the Tenant Farmers of Great Britain, which is of so remarkable a nature that it justly challenges some comment. The following extract is the commencement of that address: – "I am invited by my friend Mr Welford, the compiler of the abstract of the evidence given before the committee on the Game laws, to write a short address to you on the important question which is treated of in this volume. I feel that an apology is scarcely necessary for the liberty I am taking; the deep interest I have long felt in the subject of the Game laws, my strong conviction of its great importance to you as a class, and the extensive correspondence in reference to it which I have maintained with many of your respected body in almost every county of England and Scotland, seem to entitle me to say a few words to you on this occasion.

"From the perusal of this evidence – and it is but a small portion of that which was offered to the committee – you will perceive that, as capitalists and employers of labour, you are neither asserting your just rights, nor occupying your proper position. By long-continued custom, which has now obtained almost the force of law, when you became tenants of a farm, you were not permitted to enjoy the advantages which pertain to it so fully as is the case with the occupiers of almost every other description of property. A farmer becomes the tenant of certain lands, which are to be the basis of his future operations, and the foundation of that degree of prosperity to which he may attain. To secure success, it is needful that capital should be invested, and industry and skill exercised; and in proportion as these are largely employed, in order to develop to the utmost extent the resources of the soil, will be the amount of prosperity that will be secured. The capital, skill, and industry, will depend upon the capacity of the farmer; but the reward for their employment will depend in no small degree upon the free and unfettered possession of the land – of its capabilities, of all that it produces, and of all that is sustained upon its surface. There is a mixture of feudalism and of commercial principles in your mode of taking and occupying land, which is in almost all cases obstructive, and in not a few utterly subversive, of improvement. You take a farm on a yearly tenantry, or on a lease, with an understanding, or a specific agreement, that the game shall be reserved to the owner; that is, you grant to the landlord the right to stock the farm – for which you are to pay him rent for permission to cultivate, and for the full possession of its produce – with pheasants, partridges, hares, and rabbits, to any extent that may suit his caprice. There may be little game when you enter upon the farm; but in general you reserve to yourselves no power to prevent its increase, and it may and often does increase so, as to destroy the possibility of profit in the cultivation of the farm. You plough, and sow, and watch the growing crops with anxiety and hope; you rise early, and eat the bread of carefulness; rent-day comes twice a-year with its inexorable demand; and yet you are doomed too frequently to see the fertility which Providence bestows and your industry would secure, blighted and destroyed by creatures which would be deemed vermin, but for the sanction which the law and your customs give to their preservation, and which exist for no advantage to you, and for no good to the public, but solely to afford a few day's amusement in the year to the proprietors of the soil. The seed you sow is eaten by the pheasants; your young growing grain is bitten down by the hares and rabbits; and your ripening crops are trampled and injured by a live stock which yields you no return, and which you cannot kill and take to market. No other class of capitalists are subjected to these disadvantages – no other intelligent and independent class of your countrymen are burdened with such impositions."

We pity the intelligence of the reader who does not behold in these introductory paragraphs the symbol of the cloven foot. The sole object of the volume, for which Mr Bright has the assurance to stand as sponsor, is to sow the seeds of discord between the landowners and the tenants of England, by representing the former to the latter in the light of selfish monopolists, who, for the sake of some little sport or yearly battue, or, it may be, from absolute caprice, make havoc throughout the year, by proxy, of the farmers' property, and increase their stock of game whenever they have an opportunity, at his expense, and sometimes to his actual ruin. Such is the tendency of this book, which is compiled for general circulation; and which, we think, in many respects is calculated to do a deal of harm. As a real treatise or commentary upon the Game laws, it is worthless; as an attack upon the landed gentry, it will doubtless be read in many quarters with extreme complacency. Already, we observe, a portion of the press have made it a text-book for strong political diatribes; and the influence of it will no doubt be brought to bear upon the next general election. As we ourselves happen to entertain what are called very liberal opinions upon this subject of the Game laws, and as we maintain the principle that in this, as in every other matter, the great interests and rights of the community must be consulted, without reference to class distinctions – as we wish to see the property of the rich and the liberties of the poor respected – as we consider the union and cordial co-operation between landlord and tenant the chief guarantee which this country yet possesses against revolution, and the triumph of insolent demagogues – our remarks upon the present subject may not be ill-timed, or unworthy of the regard of those who think with us, that, in spite of recent events, there yet may be something to preserve.

But, first, let us consider who this gentleman is that comes forward, unsolicited, to tender his advice, and to preach agitation to the tenantry of Great Britain. He is one of those persons who rose with the League – one of those unscrupulous and ubiquitous orators who founded and reared their reputation upon an avowed hostility to the agricultural interests of the country. Upon this point there can be no mistake. John Bright, member for Durham, is a child of the corn, or rather the potato revolution, as surely as Anacharsis Clootz was the enfant trouvé of the Reign of Terror. With the abstract merits of that question we have nothing to do at present. It is quite sufficient for us to note the fact, that he, in so far as his opportunities and his talents went, was amongst the most clamorous of the opponents to the protection of British agriculture; and that fact is a fair and legitimate ground for suspicion of his motives, when we find him appearing in the new part of an agricultural champion and agitator. It is not without considerable mistrust that we behold this slippery personage in the garb and character of Triptolemus. He does not act it well. The effects of the billy-roller are still conspicuous upon his gait – he walks ill on hobnails – and is clearly more conversant with devil's-dust and remnants than with tares. Some faint suspicion of this appears at times to haunt even his own complacent imagination. He is not quite sure that the farmers – or, in the elegant phraseology of the League, the hawbucks and chawbacons – whom he used to denounce as a race of beings immeasurably inferior in intellectual capacity to the ricketty victims of the factories, will believe all at once in the cordiality and disinterestedness of their adviser; and therefore he throws out for their edification a specious bit of pleading, which, no doubt, will be read with conflicting feelings by some of those who participated in the late conversion. "You have been taught to consider me, and those with whom I have acted, as your enemies. You will admit that we have never deceived you – that we have never TAMELY SURRENDERED that which we have taught you to rely upon as the basis of your prosperity – that we have not pledged ourselves to a policy you approved, and then abandoned it; and as you have found me persevering in the promotion of measures, which many of you deemed almost fatal to your interests, but which I thought essential to the public good, so you will find me as resolute in the defence of those rights, which your own or your country's interests alike require that you should possess."

All this profession, however, we hope, will fail to persuade the farmers that their late enemy has become their sudden friend; and they will doubtless look with some suspicion upon the apocryphal catalogue of grievances which Mr Bright has raked together, and, with the aid of his associate, promulgated in the present volume. It is not our intention at present to extract or go over the evidence at large. We have read it minutely, and weighed it well. A great part of it is utterly irrelevant, as bearing upon questions of property and contract with which the legislature of no country could interfere, and which even Mr Bright, though not over scrupulous in his ideas of parliamentary appropriation, has disregarded in framing the conclusions of the rejected report which he proposed for the adoption of the committee. That portion, however, we shall not pass over in silence. It is but right that the country at large should see that this volume has been issued, not so much for the purpose of obtaining a revision of the law, as of sowing discord amongst the agriculturists themselves; and it is very remarkable that Mr Bright, throughout the whole of his inflammatory address, takes no notice whatever of the Game laws, or their prejudicial effect, or their possible remedy by legislative enactment, but confines himself to denunciation of the landlords as a class antagonistic to the tenantry, and advice to the latter to combine against the game-preserving habits of the gentry.

Now this question between landlord and tenant has nothing to do with the Game laws. The man who purchases an estate, purchases it with every thing upon it. He has, strictly speaking, as much right to every wild animal which is bred or even lodges there – if he can only catch or kill them – as he has to the trees, or the turf, or any other natural produce. The law protects him in this right, in so far, that by complying with certain statutory regulations – one of which relates to revenue, and requires from him a qualification to sport, and another prescribes a period or rotation for shooting – he may, within his own boundaries, take every animal which he meets with, and may also prevent any stranger from interfering with or encroaching upon that privilege. We do not now speak of penalties for which the intruder may be liable. That is a separate question; at present we confine ourselves to the abstract question of right.

But neither game nor natural produce constitute that thing called RENT, without which, since the days of forays have gone by, a landowner cannot live. Accordingly, he proposes to let a certain portion of his domains to a farmer, whose business is to cultivate the soil, and to make it profitable. He does so; and unless a distinct reservation is made to the contrary, the right to take the game upon the farm so let, passes to the tenant, and can be exercised by him irrespective of the wish of the landlord. If, on the contrary, the landlord refuses to part with that right which is primarily vested in his person, and which, of course, he is at full liberty either to reserve or surrender, the proposing tenant must take that circumstance into consideration in his offer of rent for the farm. The game then becomes as much a matter of calculation as the nature of the soil, the necessity of drainage, or the peculiar climate of the farm. The tenant must be guided by the principles of ordinary prudence, and make such a deduction from his offer as he considers will compensate him for the loss which his crop may sustain through the agency of the game. If he neglects to do this, he has no reasonable ground for murmuring – if he does it, he is perfectly safe. Such is the plain simple nature of the case, from which one would think it difficult to extract any clamant grievance, at least between the landlord and the tenant. No doubt the tenantry of the country individually and generally may, if they please, insist in all cases on a complete surrender of the game; and if they do, it is far more than possible that their desire will be universally complied with. But, then, they will have to pay higher rents. The landlord is no gainer in respect of game, nay, he is a direct loser; for the fact of his preservation and reserval of it reduces the amount of rent which he otherwise would receive, and, besides this, he is at much expense in preserving. Game is his hobby which he insists upon retaining: he does so, and he actually pays for it. Therefore, when a tenant states that he has lost so much in a particular year in consequence of the game upon his farm, that statement must be understood with a qualification. His crop may indeed have suffered to a certain extent; but then he has been paid for that deterioration already, the payment being the difference of rent, fixed between him and the landlord for the occupation of a game farm, less than what he would have offered for it had there been no game there, or had the right to kill it been conceded.

"O but," says Mr Bright, or some other of the soi-disant friends of the farmer, "there is an immense competition for land, and the farmers will not make bargains!" And whose fault is that? We recollect certain apothegms rather popular a short while ago, about buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market, and so forth, and we have always understood that the real price of an article is determined by the demand for it. If any farm is put up to auction under certain conditions, there is no hardship whatever in exacting the rent from the highest successful competitor. The reservation of the right to kill game is as competent to the proprietor as the fixing the rotation of the crops, or the conditions against scourging the soil. The landlord, when he lets a farm, does not by any means, as Mr Bright and his legal coadjutor appear to suppose, abandon it altogether to the free use of the tenant. He must of necessity make conditions, because he still retains his primary interest in the soil; and if these were not made, the land would in all probability be returned to him after the expiry of the lease, utterly unprofitable and exhausted, it being the clear interest of the tenant to take as much out of it as possible during the currency of his occupation. Now all these conditions are perfectly well known to the competing farmer, and if he is not inclined to assent to them, he need not make an offer for the land. Does Mr Bright mean to assert that the competition for land is so great, that the tenant-farmers are absolutely offering more than the subjects which they lease are worth? If so, the most gullible person on the face of this very gullible earth would not believe him. To aver that any body of men in this country, are wilfully and avowedly carrying on a trade or profession at a certain loss, is to utter an absurdity so gross as to be utterly unworth a refutation. And if Mr Bright does not mean this, we shall thank him to explain how the competition for land is a practical grievance to the farmer.

Nevertheless, we are far from maintaining that the system of strict game preservation is either wise or creditable, and we shall state our arguments to the contrary hereafter. At present let us proceed with Mr Welford.

About one-half, or even more, of this volume, is occupied with evidence to prove that the preservation of game upon an estate is more or less detrimental to the crops. Who denies it? Pheasants, though they may feed a great deal upon wild seeds and insects, are unquestionably fond of corn – so are partridges; and hares and rabbits have too good taste to avoid a field of clover or of turnips. And shall this – says Mr Bright, having recourse to a late rhetoric – shall this be permitted in a Christian or a civilised country? Are there not thousands of poor to whom that grain, wasted upon mere vermin, would be precious? Are our aristocracy so selfish as to prefer the encouragement of brute animals to the lives of their fellow men? &c. &c; to all of which eloquent bursts the pious Mr Welford subjoins his ditto and Amen. For our own part, we can see no reason why hares, and pheasants, and partridges, should not be fed as well as Quakers. While living they are undoubtedly more graceful creatures, when dead they are infinitely more valuable. When removed from this scene of transitory trouble, Mr Bright, except in an Owhyhean market, would fetch a less price than an ordinary rabbit. Our taste may be peculiar, but we would far rather see half-a-dozen pretty leverets at play in a pasture field of an evening, than as many hulking members of the Anti-Corn-Law League performing a ponderous saraband. Vermin indeed! Did Mr Bright ever see a Red-deer? We shrewdly suspect not; and if, peradventure, he were to fall in with the monarch of the wilderness in the rutting season, somewhere about the back of Schehallion or the skirts of the moor of Rannoch, there would be a yell loud enough to startle the cattle on a thousand hills, and a rapid disparition of the drab-coloured integuments into the bosom of a treacherous peat-bog. But a Red-deer, too, will eat corn, and often of a moonlight night his antlers may be seen waving in the crofts of the upland tenant; therefore, according to Mr Bright, he too is vermin, and must be exterminated accordingly.

And this brings us to Mr Welford's grand remedy, which is abundantly apparent from the notes and commentaries interspersed throughout the volume. This gentleman, in the plenitude of his consideration for the well-being of his country, is deliberately of opinion that game should be exterminated altogether! Here is a bloody-minded fellow for you with a vengeance!

"What! all my pretty chickens and their dam!Did you say all?"

What! shall not a single hare, or pheasant, or partridge, or plover, or even a solitary grouse, be spared from the swoop of this destroying kite? Not one. Richard Griffiths Welford, Esquire, Barrister-at-law, has undertaken to rouse the nation from its deadly trance. Yet a few years, and no more shall the crow of the gorcock be heard on the purple heath, or the belling of the deer in the forest, or the call of the landrail in the field. No longer shall we watch at evening the roe gliding from the thicket, or the hare dancing across the lawn. They have committed a crime in a free-tradeland – battened incontinently upon corn and turnips – and, therefore, they must all die! Grain, although our ports are to be opened, has now become a sacred thing, and is henceforward to be dedicated to the use of man alone. Therefore we are not without apprehension that the sparrows must die too, and the thrushes and blackbirds – for they make sad havoc in our dear utilitarian's garden – and the larks, and the rooks, and the pigeons. Voiceless now must be our groves in the green livery of spring. There shall be no more chirping, or twittering, or philandering among the branches – no cooing or amorous dalliance, or pairing on the once happy eve of St Valentine. All the fauna of Britain – all the melodists of the woods – must die! In one vast pie must they be baked, covered in with a monumental crust of triumphant flour, through which their little claws may appear supplicantly peering upwards, as if to implore some mercy for the surviving stragglers of their race. But stragglers there cannot be many. Timber, according to our patriotic Welford, is, "next to game, the farmer's chief enemy!" What miserable idiots our infatuated ancestors must have been! They thought that by planting they were conferring a boon upon their country; and in Scotland in particular they strove most anxiously to redeem the national reproach. But they were utterly wrong: Welford has said it. Timber is a nuisance – a sort of vegetable vermin, we suppose – so down must go Dodona and her oaks; and the pride of the forests be laid for ever low. Nothing in all broad England – and we fear also with us – must hereafter overtop the fields of wheat except the hedgerows! Timber is inimical to the farmer; therefore, free be the winds to blow from the German ocean to the Atlantic, without encountering the resistance of a single forest – no more tossing of the branches or swaying of the stems – or any thing save the steeples, fast falling in an age of reason into decay, the bulk of some monstrous workhouse, as dingy and cheerless as a prison, and the pert myriads of chimney-stalks of the League belching forth, in the face of heaven, their columns of smoke and of pollution! Happy England, when these things shall come to pass, and not a tree or a bush be left as a shelter for the universal vermin! No – not quite universal, for a respite will doubtless be given to the persecuted races of the badger, the hedgehog, the polecat, the weasel, and the stoat. All these are egg-eaters or game-consumers, and so long as they keep to the hedgerows and assist in the work of extermination, they will not only be spared but encouraged. Let them, however, beware. So soon as the last egg of the last English partridge is sucked, and the last of the rabbits turned over in convulsive throes, with the teeth of a fierce little devil inextricably fastened in its jugular – so soon as the rage of hunger drives the present Pariahs of the preserve to the hen-roost – human forbearance is at an end, and their fate also is sealed. The hen-harrier and the sparrowhawk, so long as they quarter the fields, pounce upon the imprudent robin, or strike down the lark while caroling upon the verge of the cloud, will be considered in our new state of society, as sacred animals as the Ibis. But let them, after having fulfilled their mission, deviate from the integrity of their ways, and come down upon a single ginger-pile, peeping his dirty way over the shards of a midden, towards his scrauching and be-draggled mother – and the race will be instantly proscribed. A few years more, and, according to the system of Messrs Bright and Welford, not a single wild animal – could we not also get rid of the insects? – will be found within the confines of Great Britain, except the gulls who live principally upon fish; and possibly, should there be a scarcity of herring, it may be advisable to exterminate them also.