and violence, with other articles of property. Indeed, something more, from its anomalous nature-from the difficulty of drawing a line that shall not appear arbitrary, between what is made property as game, and what is left open, as blackbirds or hedgesparrows, and from the evil thoughts, and the facility of executing them, which rise before a labourer returning from his work, at the sight of three or four hundred pheasants, and more than as many hares running about a field by the road-side. The excitement of the sport and the adventure must also go for something; though profit, either for a livelihood, or for a little loose spending money, will lie usually at the bottom,-the party himself may not be able always to answer to himself which is which. Whilst public opinion takes part with the poacher, many will engage in it, who will refrain were this patronage withdrawn. But in counties where wages are 2s. 6d. a-week, the dozen helpers whom Mr Slaney mentions as hired at 2s. 6d. anight, cannot be expected to be the last. It is not probable that, in England, offences of this kind will ever be reduced lower than the average in Scotland, where, under an undisturbed system of lawful sale for two centuries, and a qualification practically obsolete, depending upon the legal meaning of an ancient word (a ploughgate) which nobody can explain, they have been too inconsiderable to notice. The gentry of Scotland have had in these, as well as with their Poor Laws, the discretion to avoid making them a national grievance. The contagion of bad example, however, spreads; and the number imprisoned in Scotland, in 1825, for offences against Game Laws, was just thirty.

Game might be lawfully sold in France before the Revolution; but the right of hunting, being made a sort of 'droit réel 'annexé à la seigneurie et à la haute justice,' the feudal horror of a chasse purement cuisinière would prevent the public from profiting by the technical legality of sale. At the present moment, the people in office cannot make a guess what proportion of the game sold in the market has been lawfully, and what unlawfully killed. The following document respecting the present operation of the French Game Laws, (the principle of which agrees with that of Mr S. Wortley's bill,) surprised us at first exceedingly; and seemed to show, that however we might hope to dilute the aggravated nature of our offences and of our punishments by the proposed improvements, yet that the experience of our neighbours was not such a precedent, as we had hoped for, to authorize us to indulge any expectation that the number of offences would soon be diminished. Further consideration, however, satisfies us that the circumstances of France and England are so entirely different, that the precedent cannot apply

sufficiently close to justify even the latter apprehension. The Minister of Justice, in 1825, made an official report, for the first time, of the administration of criminal justice in France. The result of the table entitled Chasse et Port d' Armes,' is as follows:

The total number of indictments, or accusations, for offences against what we should call the Game Laws, throughout France, amounts to

The number of individuals proceeded against,

Of these have been punished by imprisonment, for less

than one year,

The remainder by fines,

4374

5799

1320

4479

17

4462

The singular excess of offences of this description beyond our own, can have nothing to do, in this matter, with marketable considerations. By the Revolution and the Law of partible Succession, France is broken up into a multiplicity of small properties. In this case, a sort of border war of litigation will readily arise among the several proprietors, if they take to punishing, by retaliatory prosecutions, each other's trespasses, which, in such minute estates, must be unavoidable every time a man walks out with his gun. Nothing like this, however, can well occur in England, where the land is occupied in farms and properties of much greater extent. In the next place, no distinction is taken between the offences of trespass in pursuit of game, and those of carrying a gun without a certificate; an offence which a small proprietor, when tempted by finding that a covey has lighted in his field, is very likely to commit, although he may have grudged the fifteen francs, the moderate tax at which the privilege of carrying a gun is purchased. We refer to the examples of Scotland and of France, in order to prevent unreasonable disappointments. A great deal will nevertheless be gained, should we be unable to gain all.

It is not, however, by underselling the poacher that we expect to destroy his trade. Nobody would think of rearing game, as commodity, at the price which the poacher now takes for it as plunder; and less would not be a sale at all, but a gift. The landlord and the public must look to attain their object by the help of their new allies. The situation of the small landowner and farmer will be entirely reversed. His new interest will place him immediately among the preservers. As master, he will warn and dismiss the suspected labourer; as occupier, he will apprehend the trespasser; and as prosecutor, witness, and juror, he will carry through the conviction of the prisoner. In the agricultural districts, this will be security enough. In the

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manufacturing ones, it is true, such numbers may be always brought to bear on a given point, as to make all resistance impossible, even under a hue and cry. Still, detection and prosecution will be infinitely facilitated; and, let the worst come to the worst, the mischief will be confined to the neighbourhood of the great manufacturing towns, where preserves have no more business to exist, than in Hyde Park, or among the nursery-gardens of Chelsea. Excitements to crime of so irresistible a description, are what no one is more entitled to set up in such a situation, to tempt the people of Israel to sin,' than to set a trap in his woods, so baited as to attract the instinct of all the animals of his neighbourhood. There is a moral and political condition in the title-deeds of every estate-that it shall be used according to the interest of society, and not converted, at one's own caprice, into a public nuisance. If these places of ill-fame are not removed voluntarily to a reasonable distance, one shall better understand the policy of the ancient law, by which nobody could appropriate these establishments to look ' after and preserve game,' without an express permission from the crown. The principal co-partners, however, to whose zeal and services the game-producer must now look for waylaying the poacher's spoil, not so much by anticipating it, as by closing up his debouche, are the salesman and poulterer. The licensing system seems absolutely necessary for this part of the arrangement; and the little addition to the price, which this restriction upon free trade will create, must be submitted to as the only means of making it worth their while to co-operate in sufficiently active and comprehensive measures. The straight-forward evidence given by these witnesses, is very satisfactory in the encouragement which it holds out. Indeed, their conduct seems to have been throughout extremely creditable; especially in the unsuccessful association which they already entered into once, for the purpose of putting a stop to trading in game. It fully entitles them to the public confidence, both in the anxiety they so properly express, to be relieved from the necessity of carrying on an unlawful business, and in the assurances they offer, that they both can and will enforce any law that shall be reasonable enough to be capable of execution.

Having done this, we shall for the future not have the law to blame. Other friends of humanity keep warning us, that if we cannot, by direct enactment, put an end to colonial slavery, nevertheless, by the removal of our penalties from sugar raised by free labour, we might make the traffic in human flesh and human bondage not worth pursuing. In the same manner, if the game-producer is allowed to bring it, like other poultry, directly

to the consumer, it can scarcely continue worth the poacher's while to burn his fingers by tampering with the market, which he can scarcely make answer, even with a close and wasteful monopoly of it secured to him by law. Hitherto our legislature has given us no option. The man who would buy for the consumption of his house a pound of sugar, or a brace of partridges, can only get what has been procured by crime.

Neither rich nor poor can hope to reconcile the contradictory advantages of strongly contrasted periods of life, or of society. All of us, who live long enough, lose the play-grounds of our youth, and have to betake ourselves to more serious amusements. The landlord must put up with high rents and cheaper luxuries, in lieu of the stillness of his ancient solitary reign. The peasant must let the mechanic take him to his Institute, and learn how to make the most of the new interests and pleasures that are rising up over the ruins of the Deserted Village' of the poet. The sooner we get our minds and character into fellowship with the wants and the spirit of the age we live in, the better for our usefulness and happiness. And no class has so much inducement as the lower orders to learn this lesson early, since no class can so ill afford to pay the entrance-money which experience levies on its grown-up scholars. They should be taught that it would really be as reasonable to set up a title by occupancy to an acre of land, as to a covey of partridges at the present day. Those odious boards that peep over a hedge, and tell us travellers on life's dusty turnpike, that there is no thorough'fare,' or that 'trespassers will be prosecuted according to law,' are in truth but signs of civilisation. We must consent to hail them as such, like the sailor, who, being shipwrecked on an unknown coast, thanked God when he saw a gallows, for having cast him among a just and polished people. The humble classes, whether in town or country, have a hold on the sympathy of every tolerably gentle nature; especially for the way in which they seem displaced so frequently, by the broad movement and inexplicable machinery of a great community. In London, for instance, the poor man has no chance of ever getting a further knowledge what fresh air is like, or what is meant by the country, than the New Road, or Covent Garden market, show him. In the country, enclosures have left him scarce a common for his goose, or a green for his children. It was in vain, however, when the drainage was begun in Lincolnshire, (that county which Henry VIII. called so justly, the most brute and beastly shire of all my realm,') that its inhabitants rose up in behalf of the ague and the wild-duck, singing, Let's be men, ' and we'll enjoy our Holland fen.' The Crowlanders were

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obliged to submit to the reformation of their land, as they had been formerly to that of their religion. But whatever compensation can be introduced for these privations and exclusions, which seem to raise a disproportionate share of the penalties of civilisation from the pittance of the poor, it is imperative on the justice of society to secure for them education, rational and accessible; encouragement, by all available institutions and examples, to independence, both of circumstances and of character; a clergy, that shall be as often in the cottage as at the hall, and who shall not forget, that Christianity was to be preached especially to the poor; and (not least, nor last,) an earnest watching of the times, and a daily interrogating of every law in its connexion with the condition, feelings, and tendencies of the people. Thus alone can our Legislature be spared the abomination of positively creating the crimes it punishes; and of sowing, in the form of revolting statutes, those dragon's teeth, which rise back upon us in the shape of desperate and armed men.

ART. IV.-The Planter's Guide; or a Practical Essay on the best Method of giving immediate Effect to Wood, by the Removal of Large Trees and Underwood; being an attempt to place the Art, and that of General Arboriculture, on Phytological and fixed Principles; interspersed with Observations on General Planting, and the Improvement of Real Landscape; originally intended for the Climate of Scotland. By SIR HENRY STEUART, BART., L.L.D. F.R.S.E., &c. Second Edition, greatly improved and enlarged. Edinburgh and London, 1828.

THIS HIS is in every way a very valuable and meritorious work; abounding with curious learning and ingenious remarks, but still more full of practical information, useful precepts, and necessary cautions, delivered with an earnestness, copiousness, and precision, that must recommend them to readers of every description. It is perhaps a little too long-as what book is not? -the style a little too ambitious, and occasionally finical; and the tone somewhat fantastically compounded of artificial selfabasement and natural self-complacency. But these are small drawbacks; which it would be invidious for any one but a professed critic (to whom it is not optional) to take notice of; while it would be unjust, even in that critic, not to acknowledge that the book is not only learnedly but agreeably written, and may be read with pleasure by those who do not intend to plant, as