ABSTRACT
To be both unjust and ineffectual is the deepest reproach with which any law can be stained, but it is by no means the foulest to which the present Game Laws are obnoxious. Discontent against their superiors is one of the first effects produced by the Game Laws among the lower orders. Finding himself employed as the agent to transfer the property of one rich man to another, who is obnoxious to no punishment for receiving it, the poacher, when discovered and convicted, perceiving himself to be the only victim, is tempted to think that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor; an observation which a poacher made on the other day. Frequent breaches of the peace, murders, and homicides, are the natural result of the continual contests which are kept alive in a parish, between different portions of its armed population.
