is not necessary to show exactly how the result would be achieved. But, clearly, the piratical firms would find their occupation gone. The public would by no means be content with reprints of standard works. There would be money in novelty, and few things are more certain than that the publishing trade would put their heads together and agree on some cartel to maintain prices.

Take as an illustration the steamer traffic on the Clyde. It is perfectly open to anybody to run steamboats from pier to pier; and in fact there were some thirty private owners, each with a vessel or two, half-a-century ago. The railway companies, with their powerful resources, have, as a matter of fact, made private ownerships impossible, except in the case of the West Highland line, of which its Clyde traffic is only a branch, and in that of a single private firm. A new pirate"-for so I suppose the red-hot advocates of copyright would desire me to style an owner who should take it into his head to imitate the idea of running steamers on an occupied route-would speedily be run off the station, unless (and this is a vital consideration) he could claim a generous and loyal support from the public. A vital consideration, this, because it may be asked what use the opening of traffic to free competition is, if it is practically useless owing to cartels and rings. It enables competition to succeed in the hundredth case: the case where it can appeal to sound sentiment.

Maintain copyright, and the fetters on thought are of iron. Abolish it, and they become elastic. The author gets no less remuneration, but the way lies open to reproduce his work freely, and in the rare cases when that is needed in the public interest, it is a road that can be followed.

There is no need (keeping to our nautical metaphor) to anticipate the advent of a swarm of craft flying the skull and cross-bones. But the amateur crew who wish to row

from one landing to another will not find their way barred by an interdict; and the enterprising skipper who sees a chance of meeting a felt want will be able to appeal to public generosity not to see him beaten off by the rings. Copyright, in short, is a belated survival from the days of State regulation of thought and industry. Juster views of economics recognise that only illegitimate interests can suffer by the removal of artificial restraints. At a moment when a Government returned to maintain freedom of trade is engaged in administering and justifying a highly provocative measure of protection-the new Patents Act-and when its antagonists are at length found unanimous on the blessings of State-fettered commerce, it may be unlikely that this truth will find acceptance. But such vagaries are the backwater eddies of the current of enlightenment. They cannot permanently prevail over the logic of experience and

common sense.

T. BATY.

VII.-PROGRESS OF THE GAME LAWS.

WE

E suppose that few of the many magistrates, who daily administer the law under the Game Act of 1831, realise, to the full, how vast were the changes wrought by that great measure of reform. The proposals embodied in this statute had been before the country for some years, and the most strenuous efforts had been exerted to defeat or delay the projected legislation. How it was regarded by politicians of the type of the first Duke of Wellington may be gathered from the fact that they described it as “revolutionary." Red ruin, they declared, would follow, and the breaking up of laws; while an inevitable consequence would be the disappearance of game, and, worst of all, the disappearance of the country gentleman. Happily their forebodings have been falsified, the country gentleman is still

with us. Partridges and pheasants," said Sidney Smith, "though they furnish nine-tenths of human motives, still leave a small residue which may be classed under some other head."

The direct consequences of the laws then existing were serious enough. The justices of Norfolk, in Quarter Sessions assembled a tribunal never suspected, we believe, of any undue sympathy with poachers-were led to deplore the "injurious operation " of statutes under which imprisonment had increased "to an alarming and unprecedented extent." It is curious to reflect that, within the memory of men still living, it was unlawful to buy or sell a single head of game in any circumstances whatsoever-all commerce in game being interdicted under pain of heavy penalties. Not only did there exist this absolute prohibition against any traffic therein, but the men entitled to kill or pursue game were very few in numbers. Lawyers, well versed in the lore concerning the comparative merits and conflicting claims of the long-bow and hawk, as against the musket and fowling-piece, have, indeed, doubted whether for two centuries before 1832 anyone was entitled, in point of law, to shoot a pheasant, a partridge, or a hare. However this may be, it is certain that the qualification necessary to enable a man to kill game was possessed by very few. Unless he chanced to be the owner of some chase or warren, or were the son and heir apparent of an esquire or person of superior degree, the fortunate sportsman must needs possess a qualification in land, to wit, an estate of £100 a year, or a life estate or leasehold for ninety-nine years of £150 per annum-" fifty times the property," says Blackstone, "is required to enable a man to kill a partridge as to vote for a knight of the shire." Neither rank nor wealth could, in itself, confer the coveted privilege

"A Doctor of Divinity," explained Mr. Secretary Peel, in the House of Commons, "does not possess the privilege of killing game. He may, indeed,

procreate a qualified person, but he himself is not a qualified person. The eldest son of an esquire or person of higher degree is a qualified person, and, as a Doctor of Divinity is a person of higher degree than an esquire, he may beget a qualified man, but he has not himself the privilege of killing game. . . . The second son of a man of £20,000 a year is not by law qualified to kill game: the younger children of a man possessing the largest property in the kingdom, are not qualified by law to kill game on their fathers' estates."

On a property of less than £100 a year, it would often happen that no one had the right of sporting: if the owner himself were seen shooting, an information might be laid against him by any man; while, although, in Blackstone's phrase, the game laws had raised a "little Nimrod" in every manor, the lord of the manor might be "warned off" as a trespasser by the owner of the soil. A tenant farmer with a thousand acres dare not kill a hare in his cornfields even with his landlord's express permission.

As may well be supposed, such laws as these were set at naught by poachers, peers, and plutocrats alike. The younger son of a duke was not content to play the humble rôle of "beater"; nor would the "Jos. Sedleys" of the day be denied their pheasants in due season. "Do the country gentlemen really imagine," asked Sydney Smith, “that it is in the power of human laws to deprive the three per cents. of their pheasants?"

The land was thronged with poachers-hundreds of respectable innkeepers and poulterers were in direct communication with them-coachmen and guards, and even lords of the manor, received their share of the spoil; while Lord Suffield relates that two or three peers were more than suspected of taking part in the illegal traffic. A Bow Street officer informed a Parliamentary Committee that he knew a place where "the whole of the village were poachers, including the constable." At a time when it was a crime either to buy game or to sell it, the London poulterers disposed of it in huge quantities-live birds were sent up to them as well as dead, eggs as well as birds. The

price of hares was from 3s. to 5s. 6d.; of partridges, from Is. 6d. to 2s. 6d.; of pheasants, from 5s. to 5s. 6d. each, but sometimes as low as Is. 6d. Partridges were at times retailed at Is. each; and a London salesman was once seen to throw 2,000 into the Thames for want of a market. The poacher could not, of course, regulate the supply in accordance with the demand. A poulterer who did a “limited trade," supplying private families only, told the Parliamentary Committee that about 10,000 head had been sent to him during the year. Customers for poultry would, he declared, most certainly have left his shop had he failed to secure a regular supply of game. When, in 1818, the Act was passed which made it illegal to buy game, it fell a dead letter. The chief clerk of Bow Street informed the Committee that he could not remember a single conviction under the Act, and stated that during the last year there had not been any conviction either for buying game or for selling it. "It is a most absurd and ridiculous tyranny," wrote the Edinburgh Review, "to prevent one man who has more game than he wants from exchanging it with another man who has more money than he wants."

A remedy was loudly demanded by the country gentry who, after the manner of their kind, called for legislation of a "more drastic" character, coupled with a more rigid enforcement of the existing laws. Night poachers were, accordingly, transported for seven, or even ten years. The result, of course, was that a spirit of fierce resistance was aroused, and more game was sold than ever had been sold before. "Poachers," continued the Edinburgh Review, "will not submit to be sent to Botany Bay without a battle." Men, who would have yielded readily to a superior force of gamekeepers, with the prospect of some three months in Norwich Gaol, fought like demons to escape transportation. They fired at the keepers, and battered them with the butt-ends of their guns. A body of poachers actually set guards round