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

Here is a pretty state of matters! First, there is to be no more sporting. That, of course, in the eyes of Messrs Bright and Welford, who know as much about shooting as they do of trigonometry, is a very minor consideration; but even there we take leave to dissent. Gouty and frail as we are, we have yet a strong natural appetite for the moors, and we shall wrestle to the last for our privilege with the sturdiest broadbrim in Quakerdom. Our boys shall be bred as we were, with their foot upon the heather, in the manliest and most exhilarating of all pastimes; and that because we wish to see them brought up as Christians and gentlemen, not as puzzle-pated sceptics or narrow-minded utilitarian theorists. We desire to see them attain their full development, both of mind and body – to acquire a kindly and a keen relish for nature – to love their sovereign and their country – to despise all chicanery and deceit – and to know and respect the high-minded peasantry and poor of their native land. We have no idea that they shall be confined in their exercise or their sports to the public highway. We do not look upon this earth or island as made solely to produce corn for the supply of Mr Bright and his forced population. We wish that the youth of our country should be taught that God has created other beings besides the master and the mechanic – that the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air have a value in their Maker's eye, and that man has a commisson to use them, but not to exterminate and destroy. "My opinion is," says Mr Bright, speaking with a slight disregard to grammar, of the sporting propensities of the landed gentry – "my opinion is, that there are other pursuits which it will better become them to follow, and which it will be a thousand times better for the country if they turn their attention to them." For Mr Bright's opinion, we have not the smallest shadow of respect. We can well believe that, personally, he has not the slightest inclination to participate in the sports of the field. We cannot for a moment imagine him in connexion with a hunting-field, or toiling over moor or mountain in pursuit of his game, or up to his waist in a roaring river with a twenty-pound salmon on his line, making its direct way for the cataract. In all and each of these situations we are convinced that he would be utterly misplaced. We can conceive him, and no doubt he is, much at home in the superintendence of the gloomy factory – in the centre of a hecatomb of pale human beings, who toil on day and night in that close and stifling atmosphere, as ceaselessly and almost as mechanically as the wheels which drone and whistle and clank above and around them – in the midst of his stores of calico, and cotton, and corduroy – in the midnight councils of the grasping League, or the front of a degraded hustings. But from none of these situations whatever, has he any right to dictate to the gentlemen of Britain what they should do, or what they should leave undone. He has neither an eye for nature, nor a heart to participate in rural amusements. And a very nice place an English manor-house would be under his peculiar superintendence and the operation of the new regime! In the morning we should meet, ladies and gentlemen, in the breakfast-room, all devoutly intent upon the active demolition of the muffins. Tea and coffee there are in abundance – but not good, for the first has the flavour of the hedges, and the second reminds us villanously of Hunt's roasted corn. There are eggs, however, and on the sideboard rest a large round of beef, with a thick margin of rancid yellow fat, and a ham which is literal hog's-lard. There are no fish. The trouting stream has been turned from its natural course to move machinery, and now rolls to the shrinking sea, not in native silver, but in alternate currents of indigo, ochre, or cochineal, according to the hue most in request for the moment at the neighbouring dye-work. In vain you look about for grouse-pie, cold partridge, snipe, or pheasant. You might as well ask for a limb of the ichthyosaurus as for a wing of these perished animals. Deuce a creature is there in the room except bipeds, and they are all of the manufacturing breed. You recollect the days of old, when your entry into the breakfast-room used to be affectionately welcomed by terrier, setter, and spaniel, and you wonder what has become of these ancient inmates of the family. On inquiry you are informed, that – being non-productive animals, and mere consumers of food which ought to be reserved for the use of man alone – they have one and all of them been put to death: and your host points rather complacently to the effigy of old Ponto, who has been stuffed by way of a specimen of an extinct species, and who now glares at you with glassy eyes from beneath the shelter of the mahogany sideboard. Tired of the conversation, which is principally directed towards the working of the new tariff, the last improvement in printed calicoes, and the prices of some kind of stock which appears to fluctuate as unaccountably as the barometer, you rise from table and move towards the window in hopes of a pleasant prospect. You have it. The old park, which used to contain some of the finest trees in Britain – oaks of the Boscobel order, and elms that were the boast of the country – is now as bare as the palm of your hand, and broken up into potato allotments. The shrubbery and flower parterres, with their elegant terrace vases and light wire fences, have disappeared. There is not a bush beyond a few barberries, evidently intended for detestable jam, nor a flower, except some chamomiles, which may be infused into a medicinal beverage, and a dozen great stringy coarse-looking rhubarbs, enough to give you the dyspepsia, if you merely imagine them in a tart. At the bottom of the slope lies the stream whereof we have spoken already, not sinuous or fringed with alders as of yore; but straight as an arrow, and fashioned into the semblance of a canal. It is spanned on the part which is directly in front of the windows, by a bridge on the skew principle, the property of a railway company; and at the moment you are gazing on the landscape in a sort of admiring trance, an enormous train of coal and coke waggons comes rushing by, and a great blast of smoke and steam rolling past the house, obscures for a moment the utilitarian beauty of the scene. That dissipated, you observe on the other side of the canal several staring red brick buildings, with huge chimney-stalks stinking in the fresh, frosty morning air. These are the factories of your host, the source of his enviable wealth; and yonder dirty village which you see about half a mile to the right, with its squab Unitarian lecture room, is the abode of his honest artisans. Nevertheless, you see nobody stirring about. How should you? The whole population is comfortably housed, for the next twelve hours at least, within brick, and assisting the machinery to do its work. No idleness now in England. Had you, indeed, risen about five or six in the morning, when the clatter of a sullen bell roused you from your dreams of Jemima, you might have seen some scores of lanterns meandering like glow-worms along the miry road which leads from the village to the factories, until absorbed within their early jaws. That is the appointed time for the daily emigration, and until all the taskwork is done, no straggling whatever is permitted. The furthest object in view is a parallelogram Bastile on the summit of a hill, once wooded to the top, and well known to the rustics as the place where the fullest nuts and the richest May-flowers might be gathered, but now in turnips, and you are told that the edifice is the Union Workhouse.

Breakfast over, you begin to consider how you shall fill up the dreary vacuum which still yawns between you and dinner. Of course you cannot shoot, unless you are inclined to take a day at the ducks and geese, which would be rather an expensive amusement. You covet a ride, and propose a scamper across the country. Our dear sir, it is as much as your life is worth! What with canals and viaducts, and railways and hedgerows, you could not get over a mile without either being plunged into water, or knocked down by tow ropes, or run into by locomotives, or pitched from embankments, or impaled alive, or slain by a stroke of electricity from some telegraphic conductor! Recollect that we are not now living in the days of steeple-chasing. Then as to horses, are you not aware that our host keeps only two – and fine sleek, sturdy Flanders brutes they are – for the purpose of conveying Mrs Bobbins and her progeny to the meeting-house? There is no earthly occasion for any more expensive stud. The railway station is just a quarter of a mile from the door, and Eclipse himself could never match our new locomotives for speed. But you may have a drive if you please, and welcome. Where shall we go to? There used to be a fine waterfall at an easy distance, with rocks, and turf, and wildflowers, and all that sort of thing; and though the season is a little advanced, we might still make shift under the hazels and the hollies; could we not invite the ladies to accompany us, and extemporise a pic-nic? Our excellent friend! that waterfall exists no longer. It was a mere useless waste; has been blown up with gun-cotton; and the glen below it turned into a reservoir for the supply of a manufacturing town. The hazels are all down, and the hollies pounded into birdlime. And that fine old baronial residence, where there were such exquisite Claudes and Ruysdaels? Oh! that estate was bought by Mr Smalt the eminent dyer, from the trustees of the late Lord – the old mansion has been pulled down, a cottage ornée built in its place, and the pictures were long ago transferred to the National Gallery. And is there nothing at all worth seeing in the county? Oh yes! There is Tweel's new process for making silk out of sow's ears, and Bottomson's clothing mills, where you see raw wool put into one end of the machinery, and issue from the other in the shape of ready-made breeches. Then a Socialist lecture on the sin and consequences of matrimony will be delivered in the market-town at two o'clock precisely, by Miss Lewdlaw – quite a lady, I assure you – whom you will afterwards meet at dinner. Or you may, if you please, attend the meeting of the Society for the Propagation of a Natural Religion, at which the Rev. Mr Scampson will preside; or you may go down to the factories, or any where else you please, except the village, for there is a great deal of typhus fever in it, and we are a little apprehensive for the children! You decline these tempting offers, and resolve to spend the morning in the house. Is there a billiard room? How can you possibly suppose it? Time, sir, is money; and money is not to be made by knocking about ivory balls. But there is the library if you should like to study, and plenty material within it. Delighted at the prospect of passing some congenial though solitary hours, you enter the apartment, and, disregarding the models upon the table, which are intended to elucidate the silk and sow's-ear process, you ransack the book-shelves for some of your ancient favourites. But in vain you will search either for Shakspeare or Scott, Milton or Fielding, Jeremy Taylor or Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine: all these are proscribed antiquities. Instead of these you will find Essays by Hampden, junior, and Ethics by Thistlewood, senior, Paine's Age of Reason, Jeremy Bentham's Treatises, Infanticide Vindicated, by Herod Virginius Cackell, Esq., Member of the Literary Institute of Owenstown, Cobden's Speeches, Wheal's Exposition of the Billy-roller, Grubb's Practical Deist, Welford's Influences of the Game Laws, and much more such profitable reading. What would you not give for a volume by Willison Glass! Disgusted with this literary miscellany, you chuck the Practical Deist into the fire, and walk up-stairs to rejoin the ladies. You find them in the drawing-room hard at work upon cross-stitch and pincushions for the great Bazar which is shortly to be opened under the auspices of the Anti-Christian League, and you feel for a moment like an intruder. But Emily Bobbins, a nice girl, who will have thirty thousand pounds when her venerated sire is conveyed to the Mausoleum of the Bobbinses, and who has at this present moment a very pretty face, trips up and asks you for a contribution to her yearly album. Yearly? – the phrase is an odd one, and you crave explanation. The blooming virgin informs you that she edits an annual volume, popular in certain circles, for the Society for the Abolition of all Criminal Punishment, she being a corresponding Member; and she presents you with last year's compilation. You open the work, and find some literary bijouterie by the disciples of the earnest school, poems on the go-a-head principle, and tales under such captivating titles as the Virtuous Poacher, Theresa, or the Heroine of the Workhouse, and Walter Truck, an Easy Way with the Mechanic. There are also sundry political fragments by the deep-thinkers of the age, from which you discover that Regicide is the simplest cure for "Flunkeyism, Baseness, and Unveracity," and that the soundest philosophers of the world are two gentlemen, rejoicing in the exotic names of Sauerteig and Teufelsdröckh. You, being a believer in the Book of Common Prayer, decline to add your contribution to the Miscellany, and make the best of your way from the house for a stroll upon the public highway. For some hours you meander through the mud, between rows of stiff hedges; not a stage-coach, nor even a buggy is to be seen. You sigh for the old green lanes and shady places which have now disappeared for ever, and you begin to doubt whether, after all, regenerated England is the happiest country of the universe. It appears an absolute desert. At a turn of a road you come in sight of a solitary venerable crow – the sole surviving specimen of his race still extant in the county – whose life is rendered bitter by a system of unceasing persecution. He mistakes you for Mr Richard Griffiths Welford, and, with a caw of terror, takes flight across a Zahara of Swedish turnips. On your way home you meet with three miserable children who are picking the few unwithered leaves from the hedges. You cross-question them, and ascertain that they receive a salary of twopence a-day from the owner of the truck-shop at the factory, in return for their botanical collections. You think of China, with a strong conviction of the propriety of becoming a Mandarin.

At dinner you are seated betwixt Miss Lewdlaw and the Rev. Mr Scampson. The appearance of the lady convinces you that she has excellent reasons for her deep-rooted hatred of matrimony – for what serpent (in his senses) would have tempted that dropsical Eve? The gentleman is a bold, sensual-lipped, pimply individual, attired in a rusty suit of black, the very picture of a brutal Boanerges. He snorts during his repast, clutches with his huge red fingers, whereof the nails are absolute ebony, at every dish within his reach, and is constantly shouting for a dram. The dinner is a plentiful one, but ill-cooked and worse served; and the wines are simply execrable. Very drearily lags the time until the ladies rise to retire, a movement which is greeted by Mr Scampson with a coarse joke and a vulgar chuckle. Then begin the sweets of the evening. Old Bobbins draws your especial attention to his curious old free-trade port, at eighteen shillings the dozen; and very curious, upon practical examination, you will find it. After three glasses, you begin to suspect that you have swallowed a live crab unawares, and you gladly second Mr Scampson in his motion for something hot. The conversation then becomes political, and, to a certain extent, religious. Bobbins, who has a brother in Parliament, is vehement in his support of the Twenty Hours' Labour Bill, and insists upon the necessity of a measure for effectually coercing apprentices. Bugsley, his opposite neighbour, can talk of nothing but stock and yarn. But Scampson, in right of his calling, takes the lion's share of the conversation. He denounces the Church, not yet dis-established – hopes to see the day when every Bishop upon the Bench shall be brought to the block – and stigmatises the Universities as the nests of bigotry and intolerance. With many oaths, he declares his conviction that Robespierre was a sensible fellow – and as he waxes more furious over each successive tumbler, you wisely think that there may be some danger in contradicting so virulent a champion, and steal from the room at the first convenient opportunity. In the drawing-room you find Miss Lewdlaw descanting upon her favourite theories. She is expounding to Emily Bobbins her rights as a socialist and a woman, and illustrating her lecture by some quotations from the works of Aurora Dudevant. The sweet girl, evidently under the magnetic influence of her preceptress, regards you with a humid eye and flushed cheek as you enter; but having no fancy to approach the charmed circle of the Lewdlaw, you keep at the other end of the room, and amuse yourself with an illustrated copy of Jack Sheppard. In a short time, Bobbins, Bugsley, and Scampson, the last partially inebriated, make their appearance; and an animated erotic dialogue ensues between the gentleman in dubious orders, and the disciple of Mary Wolstonecraft. You begin to feel uncomfortable, and as Bugsley is now snoring, and Bobbins attempting to convince his helpmate of the propriety of more brandy and water, you desert the drawing-room, bolt up-stairs, pack your portmanteau, and go to bed with a firm resolution to start next morning by the earliest train; and as soon as possible to ascertain whether Jemima will consent to accompany you to Canada or Australia, or some other uncivilised part of the world where trees grow, waters run, and animals exist as nature has decreed, and where the creed of the socialist and jargon of the factory are fortunately detested or unknown.

Such, gentle reader, is the England which the patriots of the Bright school are desirous to behold; and such it may become if we meekly and basely yield to revolutionary innovations, and conciliate every demagogue by adopting his favourite nostrum. We have certainly been digressing a good deal further than is our wont; but we trust you will not altogether disapprove of our expedition to the new Utopia. We hope that your present, and a great many future Christmasses may be spent more pleasantly; and that, in your day at least, peace may never be effected at the expense of a virtual solitude. Let us now consider what alterations may properly and humanely be made upon the present existing Game laws.

On the whole, we are inclined to agree with the resolutions adopted by the committee. These appear to recognise the principle of a qualified right of property in game, and that this property is now vested in the occupier of the soil. By this rule which may if necessary be declared by enactment, the tenant has at all times the power to secure the game to himself, unless he chooses to part with that right by special bargain. It is of course inconsistent with this qualified right of property, that any person should kill game upon lands which he is not privileged to enter; and the committee are therefore of opinion, that the violation of that right should still continue to be visited with legal penalties. But they think – and in this we most cordially agree with them – that considerable alteration should be made in the present penal code, and that, in particular, cumulative penalties for poaching should be abolished. It is monstrous that such penalties, to which the poorer classes in this country are most peculiarly liable, should be any longer allowed to exist, while the offence which these are intended to punish is in every proper sense a single one. We are inclined to get rid of every difficulty on this head by an immediate discontinuance of the certificates. The amount of revenue drawn from these is really insignificant, and in many cases it must stand in the way of a fair exercise of his privilege by the humbler occupant of the soil. If a poor upland crofter, who rents an acre or two from a humane landlord, and who has laid out part of it in a garden, should chance to see, of a clear frosty night, a hare insinuate herself through the fence, and demolish his winter greens – it is absolute tyranny to maintain, that he may not reach down the old rusty fowling-piece from the chimney, take a steady vizzy at puss, and tumble her over in the very act of her delinquency, without having previously paid over for the use of her gracious Majesty some four pounds odds; or otherwise to be liable in a penalty of twenty pounds, with the pleasant alternative of six months' imprisonment! In such a case as this the man is not sporting; he is merely protecting his own, is fairly entitled to convert his enemy into wholesome soup, and should be allowed to do so with a conscience void of offence towards God or man. We must have no state restrictions or qualifications to a right of property which may be enjoyed by the smallest cotter, and no protective laws to debar him from the exercise of his principle. And therefore it is that we advocate the immediate abolition of the certificate.

What the remaining penalty should be is matter for serious consideration. It appears evident that the common law of redress is not sufficient. Game is at best but a qualified property; for your interest in it ceases the moment that it leaves your land; but still you have an interest, may be a considerable pecuniary loser by its infringement, and therefore you are entitled to demand an adequate protection. But then it is hardly possible, when we consider what human nature with all its powerful instincts is, to look upon poaching in precisely the same light with theft. By no process of mental ratiocination can you make a sheep out of a hare. You did not buy the creature, it is doubtful whether you bred it, and in five minutes more it may be your neighbour's property, and that of its own accord. You cannot even reclaim it, though born in your private hutch. Now this is obviously a very slippery kind of property; and the poor man – who knows these facts quite as well as the rich, and who is moreover cursed with a craving stomach, a large family, and a strong appetite for roast – is by no means to be considered, morally or equitably, in the same light with the ruffian who commits a burglary for the sake of your money, or carries away your sheep from the fold. It ought to be, if it is not, a principle in British law, that the temptation should be considered before adjudging upon the particular offence. The schoolboy – whose natural propensity for fruit has been roused by the sight of some far too tempting pippins, and who, in consequence, has undertaken the hazard of a midnight foray – is, if detected in the act, subjected to no further penalty than a pecuniary mulct or a thrashing, especially if his parents belong to the more respectable classes of society. And yet this is a theft as decided and more inexcusable, than if the nameless progeny of a vagrant should, hunger-urged, filch a turnip or two from a field, and be pounced upon by some heartless farmer, who considers that he is discharging every heavenly and earthly duty if he pays his rent and taxes with unscrupulous punctuality. It is a crying injustice that any trifling piccadillo on the part of the poor or their children, should be treated with greater severity than is used in the case of the rich. This is neither an equitable nor a Christian rule. We have no right to subject the lowest of the human family to a contamination from which we would shrink to expose the highest; and the true sense of justice and of charity, which, after all, we believe to be deeply implanted in the British heart, will, we trust, before long, spare us the continual repetition of class Pariahs of infant years brought forward in small courts of justice for no other apparent reason than to prove, that our laws care more leniently for the rich than they do for the offspring of the poor.

While, therefore, we consider it just that game should be protected otherwise than by the law of trespass, we would not have the penalty made, in isolated cases, a harsh one. A trespass in pursuit of game should, we think, be punished in the first instance by a fine, not so high as to leave the labourer no other alternative than the jail, or so low as to make the payment of it a matter of no importance. Let Giles, who has intromitted with a pheasant, be mulcted in a week's wages, and let him, at the same time, distinctly understand the nature and the end of the career in which he has made the incipient step. Show him that an offence, however venial, becomes materially aggravated by repetition; for it then assumes the character of a daring and wilful defiance of the laws of the realm. For the second of offence mulct him still, but higher, and let the warning be more solemnly repeated. These penalties might be inflicted by a single justice of the peace. But if Giles offends a third time, his case becomes far more serious, and he should be remitted to a higher tribunal. It is now almost clear that he has become a confirmed poacher, and determined breaker of the laws – it is more than likely that money is his object. Leniency has been tried without success, and it is now necessary to show him that the law will not be braved with impunity. Three months' imprisonment, with hard labour, should be inflicted for the purpose of reclaiming him; and if, after emerging from prison, he should again offend, let him forthwith be removed from the country.