We have now to make a remark or two on the plea set up on behalf of the poacher against the present game laws. What is it that makes a man become a poacher? "Temptation," says Mr Bright, "and temptation only. How can you expect that the poor but honest labourer, who, on his way home from his daily toil, sees hares and pheasants swarming round his path, should abstain from eking out his scanty meal with one of those wild animals, which, though on your land, are no more yours than his? The idea would never have occurred to him if he had not seen the pheasants; and if there had been no game laws, he would have remained an upright and useful member of society." Such, we believe, is the beau-ideal of the poacher, as we find it in abolitionist speeches, and in popular afterpieces at the theatre. He is, of course, always poor, but virtuous,--
"A friendless man, at whose dejected eye Th'unfeeling proud one looks, and passes by."
We shall not quarrel, however, with the fidelity of this fancy sketch; but we may be allowed to doubt whether any large proportion of those who incur penalties for game trespass have been led into temptation by the mere abundance of game in large preserves. Men of plain sense will think it just as fair to ascribe the frequency of larceny to the abundance of bandanas which old gentlemen _will_ keep dangling from their pockets while pursuing their studies at print-shop windows. The evidence taken by the committee seems rather to show that the poacher's trade thrives best where there is what is called "a fair sprinkling" of ill-watched game, than where he has to encounter a staff of vigilant and well-trained keepers. But what though the case were otherwise? Suppose the existence of the temptation to be admitted, is it to be seriously argued that the province of legislation is not to prohibit offence, but to remove all temptation from the offenders? not to protect men in the enjoyment of their rights, but to abridge or annihilate those rights, that they may not be invaded by others? This, we affirm, is the principle when reduced to simple terms; and startling enough it is to those who have been accustomed to think that the proper tendency of laws and civilisation is in precisely the opposite direction. What although a breach of these laws may sometimes be the commencement of a course of crime, are there no other temptations which open the road to the hulks or the penitentiary? If the magistrates of our towns, who so vehemently denounce the danger of the game laws, are sincere in their search after the sources of crime, and in their efforts to repress them, we can help their inquiries--we can show them at their own doors, and swarming in every street, temptations to debauchery, which have made a hundred crimes for every one that can be traced to game laws,--and yet we cannot perceive that the zeal of our civic reformers has been very strenuously directed to discourage or to diminish the numbers of these dens of dissipation. We can refer them to the reports of our gaol chaplains for proof that three out of every four prisoners are ignorant of the simplest rudiments of education; and yet a praiseworthy attempt lately made in our metropolis to promote instruction by means of apprentice schools, was not favoured with the countenance of our chief magistrate, because he happened to be engaged in the more philanthropic duty of presiding at a meeting for condemning the game laws!