Before nine o'clock, Lady Ellinor arrived, and went straight into Miss
Trevanion's room. I took refuge in my uncle's. Roland was awake and
calm, but so feeble that he made no effort to rise; and it was his
calm, indeed, that alarmed me the most--it was like the calm of nature
thoroughly exhausted. He obeyed me mechanically, as a patient takes
from your hand the draught, of which he is almost unconscious, when I
pressed him to take food. He smiled on me faintly when I spoke to him;
but made me a sign that seemed to implore silence. Then he turned his
face from me, and buried it in the pillow; and I thought that he slept
again, when, raising himself a little, and feeling for my hand, he said
in a scarcely audible voice,--
"Where is he?"
"Would you see him, sir?"
"No, no; that would kill me--and then--what would become of him?"
"He has promised me an interview, and in that interview I feel assured
he will obey your wishes, whatever they are."
Roland made no answer.
"Lord Castleton has arranged all, so that his name and madness (thus
let us call it) will never be known."
"Pride, pride! pride still!"--murmured the old soldier. "The name, the
name--well, that is much; but the living soul!--I wish Austin were
here."
"I have sent for him, sir."
Roland pressed my hand, and was again silent. Then he began to mutter,
as I thought, incoherently, about "the Peninsula and obeying orders;
and how some officer woke Lord Wellesley at night, and said that
something or other (I could not catch what--the phrase was technical
and military) was impossible; and how Lord Wellesley asked 'Where's
the order-book?' and looking into the order-book, said, 'Not at all
impossible, for it is in the order-book;' and so Lord Wellesley turned
round and went to sleep again." Then suddenly Roland half rose, and
said in a voice clear and firm, "But Lord Wellesley, though a great
captain, was a fallible man, sir, and the order-book was his own mortal
handiwork.--Get me the Bible!"
Oh Roland, Roland! and I had feared that thy mind was wandering!
So I went down and borrowed a Bible in large characters, and placed it
on the bed before him, opening the shutters, and letting in God's day
upon God's word.
I had just done this, when there was a slight knock at the door.
I opened it, and Lord Castleton stood without. He asked me, in a
whisper, if he might see my uncle. I drew him in gently, and pointed
to the soldier of life "learning what was not impossible" from the
unerring Order-Book.
Lord Castleton gazed with a changing countenance, and, without
disturbing my uncle, stole back. I followed him, and gently closed the
door.
"You must save his son," he said in a faltering voice--"you must; and
tell me how to help you. That sight!--no sermon ever touched me more.
Now come down, and receive Lady Ellinor's thanks. We are going. She
wants me to tell my own tale to my old friend, Mrs Grundy: so I go with
them. Come."
On entering the sitting-room, Lady Ellinor came up and fairly embraced
me. I need not repeat her thanks, still less the praises, which fell
cold and hollow on my ear. My gaze rested on Fanny where she stood
apart--her eyes, heavy with fresh tears, bent on the ground. And the
sense of all her charms--the memory of the tender, exquisite kindness
she had shown to the stricken father; the generous pardon she had
extended to the criminal son; the looks she had bent upon me on that
memorable night--looks that had spoken such trust in my presence--the
moment in which she had clung to me for protection, and her breath
been warm upon my cheek,--all these rushed over me; and I felt that
the struggle of months was undone--that I had never loved her as I
loved her then--when I saw her but to lose her evermore! And then there
came for the first, and, I now rejoice to think, for the only time, a
bitter, ungrateful accusation against the cruelty of fortune and the
disparities of life. What was it that set our two hearts eternally
apart, and made hope impossible? Not nature, but the fortune that gives
a second nature to the world. Ah, could I then think that it is in
that second nature that the soul is ordained to seek its trials, and
that the elements of human virtue find their harmonious place! What I
answered I know not. Neither know I how long I stood there listening to
sounds which seemed to have no meaning, till there came other sounds
which indeed woke my sense, and made my blood run cold to hear,--the
tramp of the horses, the grating of the wheels, the voice at the door
that said "All was ready."
Then Fanny lifted her eyes, and they met mine; and then involuntarily
and hastily she moved a few steps towards me, and I clasped my right
hand to my heart, as if to still its beating, and remained still. Lord
Castleton had watched us both. I felt that watch was upon us, though
I had till then shunned his looks: now, as I turned my eyes from
Fanny's, that look came full upon me--soft, compassionate, benignant.
Suddenly, and with an unutterable expression of nobleness, the marquis
turned to Lady Ellinor, and said--"Pardon me for telling you an old
story. A friend of mine--a man of my own years--had the temerity to
hope that he might one day or other win the affections of a lady young
enough to be his daughter, and whom circumstances and his own heart
led him to prefer from all her sex. My friend had many rivals; and you
will not wonder--for you have seen the lady. Among them was a young
gentleman, who for months had been an inmate of the same house--(Hush,
Lady Ellinor! you will hear me out; the interest of my story is to
come)--who respected the sanctity of the house he had entered, and left
it when he felt he loved--for he was poor, and the lady rich. Some
time after, this gentleman saved the lady from a great danger, and was
then on the eve of leaving England--(Hush! again--hush!) My friend was
present when these two young persons met, before the probable absence
of many years, and so was the mother of the lady to whose hand he
still hoped one day to aspire. He saw that his young rival wished to
say, 'Farewell!' and without a witness: that farewell was all that his
honour and his reason could suffer him to say. My friend saw that the
lady felt the natural gratitude for a great service, and the natural
pity for a generous and unfortunate affection; for so, Lady Ellinor,
he only interpreted the sob that reached his ear! What think you my
friend did? Your high mind at once conjectures. He said to himself--'If
I am ever to be blest with the heart which, in spite of disparity of
years, I yet hope to win, let me show how entire is the trust that I
place in its integrity and innocence: let the romance of first youth be
closed--the farewell of pure hearts be spoken--unembittered by the idle
jealousies of one mean suspicion.' With that thought, which _you_, Lady
Ellinor, will never stoop to blame, he placed his hand on that of the
noble mother, drew her gently towards the door, and, calmly confident
of the result, left these two young natures to the unwitnessed impulse
of maiden honour and manly duty."
All this was said and done with a grace and earnestness that thrilled
the listeners: word and action suited each to each with so inimitable
a harmony, that the spell was not broken till the voice ceased and the
door closed.
That mournful bliss for which I had so pined was vouchsafed: I was
alone with her to whom, indeed, honour and reason forbade me to say
more than the last farewell.
It was some time before we recovered--before we _felt_ that we were
alone.
O ye moments! that I can now recall with so little sadness in the
mellow and sweet remembrance, rest ever holy and undisclosed in the
solemn recesses of the heart. Yes!--whatever confession of weakness
was interchanged, we were not unworthy of the trust that permitted the
mournful consolation of the parting. No trite love-tale--with vows
not to be fulfilled, and hopes that the future must belie--mocked the
realities of the life that lay before us. Yet on the confines of the
dream, we saw the day rising cold upon the world: and if--children
as we wellnigh were--we shrunk somewhat from the light, we did not
blaspheme the sun, and cry "There is darkness in the dawn!"
All that we attempted was to comfort and strengthen each other for that
which must be: not seeking to conceal the grief we felt, but promising,
with simple faith, to struggle against the grief. If vow were pledged
between us--_that_ was the vow--each for the other's sake would strive
to enjoy the blessings Heaven left us still. Well may I say that we
were children! I know not, in the broken words that passed between us,
in the sorrowful hearts which those words revealed--I know not if there
were that which they who own, in human passion, but the storm and the
whirlwind, would call the love of maturer years--the love that gives
fire to the song, and tragedy to the stage; but I know that there was
neither a word nor a thought which made the sorrow of the children a
rebellion to the heavenly Father.
And again the door unclosed, and Fanny walked with a firm step to her
mother's side, and, pausing there, extended her hand to me, and said,
as I bent over it, "Heaven WILL be with you!"
A word from Lady Ellinor; a frank smile from him--the rival; one last,
last glance from the soft eyes of Fanny, and then Solitude rushed
upon me--rushed, as something visible, palpable, overpowering. I felt
it in the glare of the sunbeam--I heard it in the breath of the air:
like a ghost it rose there--where _she_ had filled the space with her
presence but a moment before? A something seemed gone from the universe
for ever; a change like that of death passed through my being; and
when I woke to feel that my being lived again, I knew that it was my
youth and its poet-land that were no more, and that I had passed with
an unconscious step, which never could retrace its way, into the hard
world of laborious man!
THE GAME LAWS IN SCOTLAND.
Those who have been accustomed to watch the tactics of the Manchester
party cannot have overlooked or forgotten the significant coincidence,
in point of time, between Mr Bright's attack on the Game Laws, and
the last grand assault upon the barrier which formerly protected
British agriculture. That wily lover of peace among all orders of
men saw how much it would assist the ultimate designs of his party
to excite distrust and enmity between the two great divisions of the
protectionist garrison--the owners and the cultivators of land; and the
anti-game-law demonstration was planned for that purpose. The manoeuvre
was rendered useless by the sudden and unconditional surrender of
the fortress by that leader, whose system of defence has ever been,
as Capefigue says--"céder incessamment." It is impossible, however,
to disguise the true source of the sudden sympathy for the farmers'
grievances, which in 1845 and 1846 yearned in the compassionate bowels
of the agrarian leaders, and led to the lengthened inquiries of Mr
Bright's committee.
But it seems we are not yet done with the game-law agitation. It is
true the last rampart of protection is levelled to the ground: but the
subjugation of the country interest to the potentates of the factory
is not yet accomplished. The owners of the soil have not yet bowed low
enough to the Baal of free trade; their influence is not altogether
obliterated, nor their privileges sufficiently curtailed; and therefore
Mr Bright and the Anti-Game-Law Association have buckled on their
armour once more, and the tenantry are again invited to join in the
crusade against those who, they are assured, have always been their
inveterate oppressors; and, to cut of as much as possible the remotest
chance of an amicable settlement, it is proclaimed that no concession
will be accepted--no proposal of adjustment listened to--short of the
total and immediate abolition of every statute on the subject of game.
The truth is, that this branch of the agitation trade is too valuable
to be lost sight of by those who earn their bread or their popularity
in that line of business. Hundreds of honest peasants, rotting in
unwholesome gaols, their wives and children herded in thousands to
the workhouse--hard-working tenants sequestrated by a grasping and
selfish aristocracy--these are all too fertile topics for the platform
philanthropist to be risked by leaving open any door for conciliation;
and therefore the terms demanded are such as it is well known cannot be
accepted.
Our attention has been attracted to the doings of an association which
has for its professed object the abolition of all game laws, and which
has recently opened a new campaign in Scotland, under the leadership
of the chief magistrate of Edinburgh, and one of the representatives
of the city. Of course the construction of such societies is no
longer a mystery to any one; and that under our notice appears to
be got up on the most approved pattern, and with all the newest
improvements. A staff of active officials directs its movements, and
collects funds--lecturers, pamphleteers, newspaper editors are paid or
propitiated. From the raw material of Mr Bright's blue-books the most
exaggerated statements and calculations of the most zealous witnesses
are carefully picked out, and worked up into a picture, which is held
up to a horrified public as a true representation of the condition
of the rural districts; and the game laws become, in the hands of
such artists, a monster pestilence, enough to have made the hair of
Pharaoh himself to stand on end. It is not to be wondered at if some,
who have not had the opportunity of investigating for themselves the
effects of these laws, have been misled by the bold ingenuity of
the professed fabricators of grievances; but it is a fact which we
shall again have occasion to notice, that they have made but little
impression on the tenant farmers. Of the few members of that class who
have taken an active share in the agitation, we doubt if there is
one who could prove a loss from game on any year's crop to the value
of a five-pound note.[2] The fact is, that while no one will deny the
existence of individual cases of hardship from the operation of the
game laws, you will hear comparatively little about them among those
who are represented as groaning under their intolerable burden. If you
would learn the weight of the grievance, you must go to the burghs
and town-councils; and there--among small grocers and dissenting
clergymen, who would be puzzled to distinguish a pheasant from a
bird-of-paradise--you will be made acquainted with the extent of the
desolation of these "fearful wildfowl:" from them you will learn the
true shape and dimensions of "the game-law incubus," which, as one
orator of the tribe tells us, "is gradually changing the surface of
this once fertile land into a desert."
But while we are willing to allow for a certain leaven of misled
sincerity among the supporters of this association, it is evident that,
among its most active and influential leaders, the relief of the farmer
or the relaxation of penal laws is not the real object. We shall show
from their own writings and speeches the most convincing proof that
they contemplate far more extensive and fundamental changes than the
mere abolition of the game laws. There is not, indeed, much congruity
or system in the opinions which we shall have to quote; but in one
point it will be seen that they all concur--a vindictive hostility to
the possessors of land, and an eager desire to abridge or destroy the
advantages attached, or supposed to be attached, to that description of
property. Thus the system of entails--the freedom of real property from
legacy and probate duty--the landlord's preferable lien for the rent of
his land, figure in the debates of the abolitionist orators, along with
other topics equally relevant to the game laws, as oppressive burdens
on the industry of the country. The system of the tenure of land, also,
is pronounced to be a crying injustice; and one gentleman modestly
insists on the necessity of a law for compelling the landlord to make
payment to his tenant at the expiry of every lease for any increase in
the value of the farm during his occupation. The author of an "Essay
on the Evils of Game-Laws," which the association rewarded with their
highest premium, and which, therefore, we are fairly entitled to take
as an authorised exposition of their sentiments, thus enlarges on "the
withering and ruinous thraldom" to which the farmers are subjected by a
system of partial legislation.
"No individual," he complains, "of this trade has ever risen to
importance and dignity in the state. While merchants of every other
class, lawyers, and professional men of every other class, have often
reached the highest honours which the crown has to bestow, no farmer
has ever yet attained even to a seat in the legislature, or to any
civic title of distinction; uncertain as the trade is naturally, and
harassed and weighed down by those sad enactments the game laws, to
be enrolled among the class of farmers is now tantamount to saying,
that you belong to a caste which is for ever excluded from the rewards
of fair and honourable ambition."--(Mr Cheine Shepherd's _Essay_.
Edinburgh, 1847.)
The association of the game laws with the scorns which "patient merit
of the unworthy takes," is at least ingenious. We confess, with Mr
Cheine Shepherd, that the aspect of the times is wofully discouraging
to any hope that a coronet, "or even the lowest order of knighthood,"
will in our days become the usual reward for skill
"In small-boned lambs, the horse-hoe, or the drill."
We cannot flatter him with the prospect of becoming a Cincinnatus; or
that we shall live to see the time when muck shall make marquisates as
well as money; and perhaps the best advice, under the circumstances,
we can tender him, is that which the old oracle gave to certain unhappy
_shepherds_ in Virgil's time--
"Pascite, ut ante, boves, pueri--submittite tauros."
Absurd, however, as the complaint of this ambitious Damon appears, it
indicates at least the extent of change which he and his patrons of
the association think they may justly demand. It is not, then, redress
of game-law grievances they aim at, but an indefinite change in the
social and political system of the country. If any one doubts this,
let him read the following extract from the address of Mr Wilson of
Glassmount:--
"Much _organic change_ must, however, precede the reforms
for which they were now agitating. _The suffrage must be
extended._--(applause)--and, above all, the voters must be protected
in the exercise of their functions by _the ballot_; for, in a country
where so great a disparity existed between the social condition of the
electoral body, parliamentary election, as now conducted under a system
of open voting, was only a delusion and a mockery."--(_Caledonian
Mercury_, Feb. 12, 1849.)
From such an authority we cannot expect much amity towards the
aristocracy, who, he says, "it is notorious, are, in point of
political, scientific, and general knowledge, far behind those employed
in commerce and manufactures."[3] He compares the present state of
Britain with "the condition of France anterior to her first revolution,
when the ancient _noblesse_ possessed the same exclusive privileges
which are still enjoyed by the aristocracy of this country--and, among
the rest, _a game law_, which was administered with so much severity,
that it is admitted on all hands to have been the chief cause of that
convulsion which shook Europe to its centre."[4]
France and its institutions form a subject of constant eulogy to this
gentleman, whose speeches show him to be by far the ablest, and, at
the same time, the most straightforward of the League lecturers. He
admonishes our landed proprietors to visit that country. "In the social
condition of that country they would see the results of the abolition
of those class privileges and distinctions which their order are still
permitted to enjoy in England; and they would there find a widespread
comfort in all the rural districts, which has been produced by the
subdivision of property, and which is nowhere to be found in this
country, where game laws, and laws of entail and primogeniture, are
maintained for the exclusive amusement and aggrandisement," &c.[5]
We are willing to believe that Mr Wilson of Glassmount has never
himself visited the country whose condition he longs to see resembled
here; and that it is simply from ignorance that he eulogises the
agricultural prosperity of a land where five bushels of wheat is
the average yield of an imperial acre--where, in two generations,
the landed system of the Code Napoleon has produced five and a-half
millions of proprietors, the half of whom have revenues not exceeding
£2 a-year, and whom the greatest statist of France describes as
"_propriétaires républicains et affamés_." Our object, however, is
not to reason with adversaries of this stamp, but simply to show,
from their own words, the nature of the reforms they contemplate,
under cover of a design to ameliorate the game laws. It may be said,
indeed, that such indiscreet avowals of the more zealous members of the
Anti-Game-Law Association cannot be fairly ascribed to its leaders. But
though their language is, of course, more wary, it were easy to select
from their orations even equally strong proofs of that bitter hostility
to the landed interest, which prompts Mr Bright himself to cheer on his
followers with the announcement that the people are ready to throw off
"the burdens imposed on them by _an aristocracy who oppress, grind them
down, and scourge them_;" and "that _the time is now come to leach the
proprietors of the soil the limits of their rights_."[6]
A reference to the proceedings of the anti-game-law leaders will show
that the specimens we have given are only fair samples of the factious
spirit--the querulous, yet bullying and vindictive tone, in which
they have conducted this controversy. No one can seriously believe
that a hostility, directed not against these laws in particular, but
against the whole social and political system of our country, can be
founded on a wise and deliberate review of the effects of the statutes
in question. Discontent with things in general is a disease which
admits of no remedy, and which any ordinary treatment, by argument or
concession, would only aggravate.
There are many, however, of more moderate views, who are interested
in knowing to what extent the complaints they have heard are founded
on reason, and are capable of redress. We purpose, for the present,
to limit our remarks principally to the operation of the Scotch law
upon game, both because agitation on this subject has recently been
most active on this side of the Tweed, and because we think the
important differences in the game-laws of England and Scotland have
not been sufficiently attended to, and have given rise to much popular
misapprehension.
All the abolition orators begin by telling us that game laws are a
remnant of the feudal system--that they originated in the tyranny and
oppression of the middle ages, and are, therefore, wholly unsuited to
our improved state of society. Such an origin, of course, condemns them
at once; for, in the popular mind, feudal law is somehow synonymous
with slavery, rape, robbery, and all that is damnable. The truth is,
however, that the game law of Scotland has no more connexion with the
feudal law than with the code of Lycurgus. Even as regards England,
there is good ground for questioning Blackstone's doctrine that the
right to pursue and kill game is, in all cases, traceable to, and
derived from, the crown. But in Scotland, at all events, there never
existed any such exclusive system of forest laws as that which grew
up under the Norman kings, and which King John was finally compelled
to renounce. The broad and liberal principle out of which the Scotch
game law has grown, is the maxim of the civil law--_quod nullius est
occupanti conceditur_--that any one may lawfully appropriate and
enjoy whatever belongs to no one else--a maxim which must necessarily
form the fountainhead of all property. All wild animals, therefore,
may be seized by any one, and the law will defend his possession of
them. But out of this very principle itself there naturally springs a
most important restriction of the common privilege of pursuing game;
for the possessor of _land_, as well as the possessor of game, must
be protected in the exclusive enjoyment of what (though originally
_res nullius_) he has made his own by occupation or otherwise. It is
evident, then, that the contingent right of the hunter to the animals
he may succeed in seizing, can be exercised to its full extent only in
an unoccupied and uncultivated country; and must give way, wherever
the soil has become the subject of property, to the prior and perfect
right of the landowner. Accordingly, we find that in the Roman law
the affirmation of the common right to hunt wild animals is coupled
with this important restriction, under the very same title--"Qui
alienum fundum ingreditur, venandi aut aucupandi gratiâ, potest a
domino prohiberi ne ingrediatur;" and, notwithstanding the perplexed
and anomalous nature of the tenure of land among the Romans, we find
everywhere traces of a strict law of trespass, from the Twelve Tables
down to Justinian. And in this the civil law was followed by that
of Scotland. Subject to this inevitable restriction, and to a few
regulative enactments of less importance, the privilege continued open
to all, without distinction, up to the year 1621.[7] About this time
the tenor of the statutes shows that game of all kinds had become
exceedingly scarce; and it was probably with a view of preventing its
extirpation, as well as of discouraging trespass, which, from the
increase of the population, had increased in frequency, that, in the
above-mentioned year, an act was introduced which was, without doubt, a
decided violation of the principle on which the system was originally
founded. The act 1621 prohibited every one from hunting or hawking
who had not "a plough of land in heritage;" and subsequent statutes
extended this prohibition to the sale and purchase, and even to the
possession of game, by persons not thus qualified. This, we repeat,
was a direct departure from the leading maxim of the law, as it stood
previously; and we can see no reason whatever for now retaining it on
the statute-book. It is notorious, however, that, practically, these
statutes have now fallen into desuetude, and that the mere want of the
heritable qualification has not, for a long period, been made a ground
for prosecution. In fact, the privilege is open to any one provided
with the landlord's permission, and who has paid the tax demanded by
the Exchequer, though he may not possess a foot of land. When, then, we
find the orators of Edinburgh complaining of the harsh and intolerable
operation of the qualification statutes, it affords the most complete
evidence either of their utter ignorance of the actual state of the
law, or of the weakness of a cause that needs such disingenuous
advocacy.
The fiscal license, which was first required by the act 24th Geo. III.
c. 43, cannot be justly regarded in the light of an infraction of the
general principle of the Scotch law. Its direct object is not the
limitation of the right of hunting, but the maintenance of the public
revenue; and it will be readily admitted by all reasonable men that, on
the one hand, there cannot be a less objectionable source of taxation
than the privilege in question, and, on the other, that the duty is
not excessive, when we find above 60,000 persons in Great Britain
voluntarily subjecting themselves to it every year.
The two other principal enactments regarding the pursuit of game in
Scotland, commonly known as the Night and the Day Trespass Acts, 9
Geo. IV. c. 69, and 2 and 3 Will. IV. c. 68, cannot here be criticised
in detail. Their provisions contain one or two anomalies which we
shall have occasion to notice below, in suggesting some practicable
amendments on the present law. But as to their general spirit, we
venture to affirm that they are most legitimate developments of
the general principle above stated. In every class of injuries to
the rights of others, there are some species of the offence which,
from their frequency, or from their being difficult to detect, must
necessarily be prevented by more stringent prohibitions than those
attached to the genus in general; and in the same way that orchards
for example, timber, salmon fisheries, and many other subjects are
protected by special penalties, so has it been found requisite to
amplify the common law of trespass, in its application to that
particular manner of trespass which is confessedly the most frequent
and annoying. If the penalties are unnecessarily stringent, let them
by all means be modified; but their severity, in comparison with the
punishment of ordinary trespass, is not inconsistent with justice, or
the principles of wise legislation.
We have adverted, in this hasty sketch, only to the prominent features
and growth of the law of Scotland; but a more detailed comparison with
that of England and other countries of Europe, especially when recent
statutes and decisions are taken into view, will fully justify the
opinion of Hutcheson and other well qualified judges, that it is "the
most liberal and enlightened of all laws as to game." It recognises,
of course, no such thing as _property_ in game more than in any other
animals of a wild nature. The proprietor of a manor has no right to the
pheasant he has fed until he shall have actually brought it to bag, or
at least disabled it from escaping; and the right which he then first
acquires is quite independent of his ownership of the land.
To many the distinction thus created, by considering all game as wild
animals, appears too theoretical; and no doubt it is a question for
zoologists rather than for lawyers to decide, whether there really be
in animals any such permanent and invariable character as to justify
such a universal distinction. There is the strongest presumption
that all our domesticated animals were at one time _feræ_; and it is
rather a difficult task to show reason for considering some classes as
"_indomitabiles_," when we see the reindeer, of a tribe naturally the
most shy of man, living in the hut of his Lapland master--and when we
recollect that among birds, the duck, turkey, and peacock, with us the
most civilised and familiar of poultry, are elsewhere most indubitable
_feræ_ at this very moment. It has been argued that the commoner kinds
of game, under the system of rearing and feeding now so general, are
scarcely more shy or migratory in their habits than those animals
which the law contrasts with them as _mansuefactæ_, and therefore
regards as property: that even when straying in the fields, we may as
reasonably impute to them the _animus revertendi_--the instinct of
returning to their haunts and coverts, as to pigeons and bees which the
law for this reason retains under its protection, though abroad from
their cots or hives; that the common objection as to the difficulty
of identifying game, is one which applies as strongly to many other
subjects recognised as vested in an owner; and finally, that, being
now in reality valuable articles of commerce, these classes of animals
should cease to be viewed as incapable of becoming property. It is
difficult to gainsay the premises on which this proposal is built:
and if we look to analogy, it cannot be doubted that the invariable
tendency of civilisation is towards the restriction of the category of
_res nullius_, and by art and culture to subject all products of the
earth to the use, and consequently to the possession of man. But, apart
from this speculative view of the subject--it seems to us that, while
common opinion is unprepared for so fundamental a change in the law of
Scotland, the alteration proposed would not in practice improve the
position of any of those classes who are affected by the operation of
the present game laws, nor materially obviate any of the bad effects
usually ascribed to them.
But it is time now to turn to those alleged evils, and to form some
judgment as to whether they are in reality so weighty and numerous,
that nothing short of the total abolition of the game laws can
effectually check them. The abrogation of a law is no doubt an easy way
of overcoming the difficulty of amending it--in the same way that the
expedient of wearing no breeches will unquestionably save you the cost
of patching them; and as a device for diminishing game-law offences,
the total repeal of all game laws is perhaps as simple and efficacious
a recipe as could well be conceived. But let us first inquire into the
existence of the disease, before we resort to so summary a remedy.
There are three distinct parties who are said to be injured by the
operation of these laws--_The community_ at large suffer chiefly by
being deprived, it is alleged, of a very large proportion of the
produce of the soil, which, if not consumed by game, would go to
increase the stock of human food--_The poacher_ has to bear the double
injustice of a law which first makes the temptation, and then punishes
the transgression--_The farmer_ finds, in the protection given to game,
a source of constant annoyance, loss, and disappointment. We shall take
these complainants in their order.
The public, (we are told by the enlightened commercial gentleman who
represents the metropolis of Scotland,) the public have _a right_ to
see that none of the means for maintaining human life are wasted--a
great popular principle popularly and broadly stated. It is possible,
however, that Mr Cowan may not have contemplated all the admirable
results of his principle. He may, perchance, not have seen that it
sweeps away, not only every hare and pheasant, but every animal
whatever that cannot be eaten or turned to profit in the ledger. His
carriage horses eat as much as would maintain six poor paper-makers and
their families; the keep of his children's pony would board and educate
four orphans at the Ragged Schools. But we are not yet done with him;
for he cannot stick his fork into that tempting fowl before him until
he can satisfy us, the public, that the grain it has consumed would
not have been more profitably applied in fattening sheep or cattle.
And what, pray, is that array of plate on the _buffet_ behind him but
so much capital held back from the creation of employment and food
for that starving population, which he assures us (though every one
but himself knows it is nonsense) is increasing at the rate of 1000
per diem! Political economy of this quality may do very well for the
Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce; but we really hope, for the credit of
the city he represents, that he will not expose himself on any other
stage, nor consider it a necessary part of his duties as a legislator,
to prescribe the precise manner in which corn shall or shall not be
used.
The supposed amount of destruction by game of cereal and other produce,
has afforded a fine field for the more erudite of the game law
opponents. Mr Gayford's celebrated calculation, that three hares eat
as much as a full-grown sheep, is generally assumed as the infallible
basis of their estimates, and the most astounding results are evolved
from it.[8] Mr Charles Stevenson thinks the destruction cannot be less
than two bushels per acre over the whole kingdom, representing a total
of _two hundred thousand quarters_. "_If it be the case_," says Mr
Chiene Shepherd, with a modest hesitation--"if it be the case, that
throughout this empire the farmers, in general, suffer more loss from
game than they pay in the form of poor's tax (_and I suppose it cannot
be doubted that they do so_--that in most parts they suffer _more than
double_ the amount of their poor-rates,) then it follows, of course,
that there is more destruction from game than would make up the sum
collected from poor-rates from the whole lands of the empire."[9]
Double the amount of poor-rates paid by land may be taken roughly at
some £9,000,000. But there are others who think even this too low
an estimate, and throw into the scale (a million out or in is of no
importance) the county rate, highway rate, and all the other direct
burdens on land put together! Let us carry on the line of calculation
a step further: if game animals _alone_ consume all this, and if we
allow a fair proportion of voracity to the minor, but more numerous
_feræ_--rats, mice, rooks, wood-pigeons, &c.--it is clear as daylight
that it is a mere delusion to think that a single quarter of wheat
can, by any possibility, escape the universal devastation. There is
no lunatic so incurable as your rampant arithmetician; and the only
delusion that could stand a comparison with the above would be the
attempt to reason such men out of their absurdities.
But the actual waste of grain is not, it seems, the only way in which
the public suffers. The annual cost to the community of prosecutions
under the game acts is an enormous and annually increasing burden.
This is proved, of course, by the same system of statistics run mad as
that of which we have just given some specimens. The game convictions
in the county of Bedford, it is discovered, were, in the year 1843, 36
per cent of the total _male_ summary convictions; and the lovers of the
marvellous, who listen to such statements, are quietly left to infer,
not only that this is usually the case in Bedfordshire, but that a
similar state of things prevails throughout England and Scotland also.
They are sagacious enough, however, never to refer to general results.
They carefully avoid any mention of the fact, (which, however, any
one may learn for himself, by referring to Mr Phillipps' tables,) that
the average of the game convictions during the five years these tables
include, was, for _all England_, not 36, but a fraction over 6 per cent
of the whole. Now, let us see how the case stands in Scotland. We have
observed that our northern orators always draw their illustrations
from the south of the Tweed; and we have, therefore, looked with some
curiosity into the records of our Scotch county courts, as affording
some test of the real extent of the grievance in this part of the
empire. Unfortunately these records are not preserved in a tabular
form by all the counties; but we have been favoured with returns from
five of the most important on the east coast, which we selected as
being those in which the preservation of game is notoriously carried
to the greatest extent. An abstract of these returns will be found
below,[10] and will suffice to show how false, in regard to Scotland,
is the assertion that game prosecutions are alarmingly numerous; while
every one knows that the expense is borne, not by the public, but by
the private party, except in very rare and aggravated cases. From these
it appears that the whole number of game cases tried, or reported to
the authorities, in these five counties, during the years 1846 and
1847, was one hundred and forty-four, being about 2.5 per cent of the
whole. Fifeshire (which was selected to be shown up before Mr Bright's
committee as an abyss of game-law abuses) had, in 1848, out of eight
hundred and thirty offences, only _three_ under the game acts. As to
the alleged progressive _increase_ of such cases, the subjoined table
of the numbers for the five years preceding 1848[11] proves that,
whether it be true or not as respects isolated districts of England,
that the number of game-law trials is every year becoming a heavier
burden on the public, it certainly is not true in four of the largest
and most _game-keeping_ counties of Scotland.
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!
If we are called upon to assign a reason for the frequency of poaching,
we should attribute it neither to the mere superabundance of game
by itself, nor yet to the pressure of poverty, but very much to the
same sort of temptation that encourages the common thief to filch a
watch or a handkerchief--namely, the facility of disposing of his
spoil. Well-stocked covers may present opportunities to the poacher
for turning his craft to account, but it is plain the practice would
be comparatively rare if he did not know that at the bar of the next
alehouse he can barter his sackful of booty either for beer or ready
coin, and no questions asked. Every village of 1000 or 1500 inhabitants
offers a market for his wares, and any surplus in the hands of the
country dealer can be transferred in eighteen hours to the London
poulterer's window. There cannot be a doubt that the consumption of
game has increased enormously since the beginning of this century. It
was formerly unknown at the tables of men of moderate means, except
when haply it came as an occasional remembrance from some country
relation, or grateful M.P. Now-a-days the spouse of any third-rate
attorney or thriving tradesman would consider her housekeeping
disgraced for ever, if she failed to present the expected pheasant
or brace of moorfowl "when the goodman feasts his friends." And even
if we descend to the artisans and operatives of our large towns, it
will be found that hares and rabbits form a wholesome and by no means
unusual variation of their daily fare. We have the evidence of one of
the great Leadenhall game dealers, that in the month of November hares
are sent up to London in such quantities, that they are often enabled
to sell them at 9d., and even at 6d. each. The average weight of a hare
may be taken at about 8 lb.; and if we deduct one-half for the skin,
&c., there will remain 4 lb. of nutritious food, which, even at 2s.,
is cheaper than beef or mutton; while the occasional change cannot but
be both agreeable and beneficial to those who have so limited a choice
of food within reach of their means. Some idea may be formed of the
vast quantity of game brought into London, from the statements of Mr
Brooke, who buys £10,000 worth of game during the course of the winter;
and there are ten other great salesmen in Leadenhall market alone.
If we make allowance for the supplies sent directly to the smaller
poulterers, for the consumption in the other great towns throughout
the kingdom, and for the probably still larger quantity that never
comes into market at all, it is impossible to deny that game has now
become an important part of the food of the people, and that, as an
article of commerce, it deserves the attention of the legislature. Any
attempt to check the production and sale of a commodity for which there
is so general a demand, must prove both useless and mischievous. It
is in vain to proscribe it as an expensive luxury, and insist on the
substitution of less costly fare. It may be true, for anything we know,
that the grain or provender consumed by the 164,000 head of game, which
Mr Brooke disposed of in six months, might have produced a greater
weight of bullocks or Leicester wedders, (though this is extremely
unlikely, for the simple reason that grain, grass, and green crops form
only a _part_ of the food of any of the game species); but, whether
true or not, it is useless to prevent the rearing of game by any sort
of sumptuary enactment, direct or indirect. The proper course of
legislation is very plain. While compensation should be made exigible
for all damage from excess of game, and new statutory provision
made for this purpose, if the present law is insufficient--fair
encouragement should at the same time be given for the production,
in a legitimate way, of what is required for the use of the public.
Facilities should be afforded to the honest dealer for conducting
his trade without risk or disguise, and the useless remnant of the
qualification law in Scotland should be abolished. Measures of this
nature, by turning the constant demand for game into proper channels,
will prove the most effectual discouragement to the occupation of the
poacher, and to the reckless and irregular habits of life which it
generally induces.
A very opposite result, we are persuaded, would follow from the
adoption of Mr Bright's quack recipe for putting an end to the practice
of poaching. By what indirect influence is the abolition of the game
laws expected to produce this effect? If, indeed, along with the game
laws, you sweep away also the law of common trespass--if you proclaim,
in the nineteenth century, a return to the habits of the golden age,
when, as Tibullus tells us--
"Nullus erat _custos_, nulla exclusura volentes Janua";
and if you authorise the populace at large to traverse every park and
enclosure, at all hours and seasons, and in any numbers and any manner
they please, then we can understand that a few months probably of
rustic riot and license may settle the question by the extermination of
the whole game species. But we have not yet met any game-law reformer
so rabid as to propose putting an end to the penalties on ordinary
trespass; on the contrary, we find most of them, (Sir Harry Verney and
Mr Pusey among the number,)[12] anticipating the necessity of arming
the law with much stronger powers for preventing common trespasses.
And even without such additional powers, will not the trespass law as
it stands be employed by proprietors to prevent interference with their
sports? Is it supposed that the abolition of the game statutes will at
once prevent the owners of great manors from rearing pheasants in their
own covers? It may indeed drive them to do so at a greater expense,
and to enlist additional watchers; but it is not likely that keen game
preservers will not avail themselves of such defences as the common law
may still leave them. Game then, we contend, may be thinned by this
plan, but it will not be exterminated. The consequence will be that
its price will be enhanced; but as the demand will still continue, the
trade of the poachers will remain as thriving as ever. He may have to
work harder and to trudge farther before he can fill his wallet; but
this will be compensated by the additional price; and if the present
quantity of game is diminished by one-half, the consequence will be
that his agents will be able to pay him five shillings a-head for
his pheasants instead of five shillings a-brace. In short, we should
anticipate, as the effects of abolishing the present statutes, that,
while many of the less wealthy owners of land would be deterred by the
expense from protecting game, and while the amusement (such as it is)
would become greatly more exclusive than it is now, such a measure
would not only fail to remove any of the inducements which tempt the
idle peasant to take to the predatory life of a poacher, but would,
in the outset at least, induce many to try it who never thought of it
before.
We must now pass on to the considerations we have to offer on the
situation of the tenant-farmer as to game; and the first question that
suggests itself as to his case is this,--Whether the injury suffered by
tenants be really so serious and extensive as is represented?
"There is no denying," says Mr Shepherd, in his _Essay_, (p. 12,)
"the notoriety of the fact that, _in a great majority of instances_,
this excessive power of infringement on the property of the tenant
through these laws has been abused. It has been almost _universally
abused_." Is this true as regards either England or Scotland? or is
it merely one of those vague and reckless affirmations which a man
writing for a purpose, and not for truth, is so apt to hazard, in
disregard or defiance of the facts before him? One thing we do find
to be notorious--that the committee's evidence of game abuses in
Scotland was limited _to one solitary case_, that of the estate of
Wemyss. And although we may very readily conceive that, with more time
and exertion, the agents of the league might have ferreted out other
instances, we may, nevertheless, be allowed to express our astonishment
that, on the slender foundation of this single case, Mr Bright should
have ventured to ask his committee to find the general fact proved,
that the prosperity of agriculture "_in many parts of Scotland_ as well
as England, is greatly impaired by the preservation of game." We learn
at least to estimate the value of the honourable gentleman's judgment,
and the amount of proof which an abolitionist regards as demonstration.
But the truth is, that the case of Scotland was not examined at all;
and the _rejected_ report of Mr Bright and his associates bears on its
face the most satisfactory evidence of their utter ignorance that the
law on this side the Tweed is a perfectly different system from that of
England.
Will any believe that if our Scotch farmers, "in a great majority
of instances," found their property sacrificed, they would not have
universally joined in demanding the interference of the legislature?
But what is the fact? An examination of the reports on petitions
during the last two sessions shows that there certainly have been
petitions against the game laws, but that for every one emanating
from an agricultural body there have been ten from town-councils. We
have better evidence, however, than mere inference, for the general
distrust with which the farmers have regarded this agitation; for we
find the Leaguers themselves, one and all of them, lamenting that
their disinterested exertions on behalf of the tenantry have been
viewed by that body with the most callous and ungrateful indifference.
It is impossible to read without a smile Mr Bright's Address to the
Tenant-farmers (prefixed to Mr Welford's Summary of the Evidence);
and to mark the patient earnestness with which he entreats them to
believe that they are groaning under manifold oppressions--and insists
on "rousing them to a sense of what is due to themselves." But your
tiller of the soil is ever hard to move. It is surprising that the
obstinate fellow cannot be made to comprehend that he is the victim
of a malady he has never felt--that he will persist in believing that
if game were all he had to complain of, he might snap his fingers at
Doctor Bright and his whole fraternity. The essayist of the Association
can find no better reason to assign for what he calls "the wondrous
and apparently patient silence of the tenantry under so exasperating
an evil,"--than, forsooth, that they are too servile to speak out
their true opinions. Such an explanation, at the expense of the body
whom he pretends to represent, can only insure for him the merited
scorn of all who have opportunities of knowing the general character
of the spirited, educated, and upright men whom he ventures thus to
calumniate. The most obvious way of accounting for their wondrous
silence under oppression is also the true one--namely, that, as a
general fact, the oppression is unknown. When an intelligent farmer
looks round among his neighbours, and finds that for every acre damaged
by game there are thousands untouched by it,--when he knows that there
are not only whole parishes, but almost whole counties, in which he
could not detect in the crops the slightest indication of game,--and
further, that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred in which a tenant
really suffers injury, he is sure of prompt and ample compensation--it
is not surprising that he looks upon the Association with suspicion,
and refuses to support, by his name or his money, their system of
stupendous exaggeration. If anyone wishes to convince himself of the
actual truth, we venture to suggest to him a simple test. Damage from
game, to be appreciable at all, cannot well be less than a shilling an
acre. Now, let any farmer survey in his mind the district with which
he is best acquainted, and estimate on how much of it the tenants
would give this additional rent, on condition of the game laws being
abolished. An average-sized farm, in our best cultivated counties, may
be taken at two hundred acres--how many of his brother farmers can he
reckon up, who would consent to pay £10 a-year additional on these
terms? A similar test, it may be mentioned, was offered to one of Mr
Bright's witnesses, (Evidence, i. 4938,) who had set down his annual
damages from game at from £180 to £200, and who, after successively
declining to give £200, £100, and £75 a-year additional rent for leave
to extirpate the game, thought, at last, he _might_ give £50 a-year for
that bargain.
But the question immediately before us is this: what remedy does the
existing law of Scotland give a tenant in cases of real hardship from
the preservation of game? In regard to this question, it is impossible
to overlook the broad distinction between the cases of those who
have expressly undertaken the burden of the game, and those whose
leases contain no such covenant. The quasi-right of property in game
recognised by the English law is, by Lord Althorpe's statute of 1832,
vested in the _occupier_ of land, when there is no express stipulation
to the contrary. The reverse is virtually the case in Scotland--the
landlord retains his right to kill game, unless he shall have agreed
to surrender it to his tenant. In most cases, however, the landlord's
right does not rest merely on the common law, but is expressly reserved
to him in the lease. Now, when a tenant has deliberately become a
party to such an express stipulation, and when the quantity of game
(whether it be small or great) does not exceed, during the currency
of the lease, what it was at his entry, on what conceivable plea of
reason or justice can he ask the interference either of a court of
law or of the legislature? To say, with Mr Bright and his coadjutors,
that he seldom attends much to such minor articles in a lease--that
he does not understand their effect--that in the competition for land
he is glad to secure a farm on any conditions--all this is the most
childish trifling, and unworthy of a moment's serious notice. There is
not a single sentence in any lease that may not be set aside on the
very same grounds; and if agreements of this nature are to be cancelled
on pretences so frivolous, there is an end to all faith and meaning in
contracts between man and man.
But the tenant's case assumes a very different aspect when, by
artificial means expressly contrived for the purpose, the game has been
increased _subsequent_ to his entry. Then, it is obvious, the burden
is no longer the same which the tenant undertook. It is a state of
things which he could not anticipate from the terms of his contract;
and if the authority of the courts of law were unable to reach such a
case, and to protect the tenant from what is in fact an infringement,
on the part of the landlord, of their mutual agreement, it is difficult
to imagine stronger grounds for insisting that the defect should be
supplied by positive enactment. No such interference, however, is
requisite. Our law courts not only possess the power of enforcing
compensation for such injuries, but in the recent decision, in the
case of Wemyss and Others v. Wilson, the supreme court has asserted
and exercised that power in the most distinct and unqualified manner.
"There is no instance," says Mr Chiene Shepherd, writing before the
date of the above-mentioned judgment, "in which our head court in
Scotland--the Court of Session--has ever given a decision entitling
a tenant to damages from a landlord for destruction of his crops by
game." Now, supposing the fact as here stated, to be strictly correct,
what inference, we ask, can common candour draw from it? Are we to
conclude that the law of Scotland, or the bench that administers it,
are so corrupt as to countenance such an insult to justice? No such
express decision had then been given, simply because no such claim had
ever been tried; and surely this very fact is in itself the strongest
possible presumption against the alleged universal abuse of the power
of preserving game--a presumption that a hardship which, up to 1847,
had never been made the ground of a formal appeal to the law tribunals,
cannot be either very frequent or very severe. The statement, however,
is not strictly correct; for, though no actual decree had been given
on the special amount of damages before 1847, a very distinct, though
incidental, opinion as to the liability of landlords in such cases was
given in a case which occurred fifteen years ago--Drysdale v. Jameson.
The principle of the law could not be more lucidly stated than in the
words of the learned judge (Fullerton) on that occasion.
"A tenant, in taking a farm, must be considered as taking it under the
burden of supporting the game, and may be presumed to have satisfied
himself of the extent of that burden, as he is understood to do of
any other unfavourable circumstance impairing the productiveness of
the farm. But, on the other hand, it would seem contrary to principle
that the landlord, who is bound to warrant the beneficial possession
to the tenant, should be allowed, by his own act, to aggravate the
burden in any great degree. A tenant, in order to support such a claim,
must prove not only a certain visible damage arising from game, but
a certain visible increase of the game, and _a consequent alteration
of the circumstances contemplated in the contract, imputable to the
landlord_. The true ground of damage seems to be, not that the game is
abundant, but that its abundance has been materially increased since
the date of the lease."[13]
Surely so clear an opinion, coming from such a quarter, was a pretty
plain indication of the protection which the law would extend to a
tenant in these circumstances; and, accordingly, it has been completely
confirmed on every point by the more recent and comprehensive decision
on Captain Wemyss' case. Any new steps on the part of a landlord for
stimulating the natural supply of game, whether by feeding them,
breeding them artificially, or by a systematic destruction of the
vermin which naturally prey on them, will be held as indicating an
intention on his part to depart from the terms of the contract, and
as therefore opening a valid claim for any damage the tenant may
experience in consequence of the change. And it is not only such
direct and active measures for augmenting the stipulated burden that
will be thus interpreted against the landlord; but even his doing so
negatively--that is, his failing to exercise the power he retains in
his own hands, and to keep down the burden to the same amount at which
the tenant found it on his entry, will be held as equivalent to his
positive act.
If, then, there ever was any ground for alleging that the state of the
law was indefinite, the objection is now removed. No one can pretend
to doubt that a tenant of land in Scotland has as ample a protection
against injury from game as the law can give him. To prevent the injury
beforehand is beyond the power of any law. All that it can do is to
afford him as prompt and effectual means of redress as it furnishes
against any other species of injury. In short, when its principle is
weighed fairly, and when we take into consideration the relief from the
fiscal qualification which Mr Mackenzie's act of last session conferred
on the farmers, we shall be able to estimate how far it is true that,
"both in parliament and out of parliament, the interests and industry
of tenants are systematically sacrificed to the maintenance of the
odious privileges of more favoured classes."
We have followed out and exposed, perhaps at greater length than was
necessary, the stock sophisms and more flagrant exaggerations by which
the total abolition of game laws is usually supported. Some points are
yet untouched; but we prefer employing the rest of our paper in briefly
stating a few suggestions for the removal of some of those difficulties
and anomalies in the Scotch law, which we set out with acknowledging.
In judging of any such alterations, it is necessary never to lose
sight of the leading principle on which the whole Scotch system is
founded--namely, the original and common right to seize and appropriate
the animals of chase, qualified and determined by the previous right of
the landowner to the exclusive use of the soil.
1st. Keeping this in view, our first change would be the abolition of
the land-qualification introduced by the Act 1621; and this for the
double reason that it was originally an unwarrantable departure from
the general principle just mentioned, and that it is inexpedient to
cumber the system with a law which is practically in desuetude.
2d. The effect of this alteration would be to remove also the useless
and improper restriction on the sale of game. There can be no good
reason for throwing difficulties in the way of the game-dealer's
trade. As a check to poaching, we have abundant proof that the present
restriction is inoperative; or, if it has any effect, it is directly
the reverse of that intended, by throwing the trade very much into the
hands of a low class of retailers. Instead of requiring a qualification
or permission, which is constantly evaded, we would substitute a
game-dealer's license, as in England.
3d. The fifth section of the Day Trespass Act empowers the person
having the right to kill game on any lands, or any person authorised by
him, to seize game in the possession of a trespasser. This provision
has sometimes given occasion to dangerous conflicts between the
parties, and is, moreover, quite at variance with the principle of the
law above noted.
4th. The next particular we shall mention is of more importance. The
evidence of Mr Bright's committee has, we think, fully disproved the
charge against the county magistracy of England, of partiality and
excessive severity in game cases. Exceptions no doubt were brought
forward, but their paucity shows the contrary to be the rule. In
Scotland there is still less ground for such an accusation. With
us, such an occurrence as a justice adjudicating in his own case is
unknown; and we find even the most violent of the abolition lecturers
admitting that proceedings before the sessions under the game statutes
are conducted with equity and leniency. But this is not enough. The
parties who have to administer the law should be above all suspicion
of bias or interest, even of the most indirect kind; and we should
greatly prefer that game prosecutions were removed altogether, into the
court of the judge-ordinary. Such an alteration, were a sure, would
be regarded generally by the benches of county magistrates as a most
desirable relief from one of the most invidious and embarrassing duties
they have to execute. But, as the law stands, they have no option--for
offences under the Day Trespass Act are cognisable by them only. If,
then, there be any valid reason against transferring the trial of all
game offences to the sheriff court, (and at present we can see none)
it is at all events most advisable that his jurisdiction should be
extended to day as well as to night trespasses.
5th. Any revisal of the law should embrace provisions against the
accumulation of penalties; for although these are very rarely insisted
on in Scotland, the power of enforcing them affords a pretext for
declamations against the severity of the game law, which its opponents
know well how to employ.
Besides these modifications of the statutes, it seems most desirable
that in all leases the disposal of game should be regulated by special
clauses, which should include a reference to arbitration in case of
dispute.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] "The game agitators are individuals who suffer _a little_, and
see their brethren suffering more, and who have _their feelings
annoyed_; and those who are not hurt at all by game, but will strike
at any public wrong."--_Speech of Mr Munro, one of the Council of the
Association._
[3] _Lecture on the Game Laws_, by R. Wilson, &c., March 22, 1848.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Address in Mr Welford's _Influences of the Game Laws_.
[7] The statute of 1600, prohibiting hunting and hawking to those who
had not "the revenues requisit in sik pastimes," is plainly one of a
sumptuary tenor, and not properly a game law.
[8] It is right to mention, that there is some discrepancy in the
estimates of Mr Bright's authorities on this point, of whom Mr Gayford
is comparatively moderate; for we have others who, (upon, no doubt,
equally sound data,) think two hares is the proper equivalent; and Mr
Back of Norfolk is convinced that _one_ hare is _worse_ than a sheep;
in other words, that one hare will eat up a statute acre. On the other
hand, Mr Berkeley weighed the _full_ stomachs of a large hare, and
an average Southdown sheep, and found them as one to fifty-five. So
that, if the accounts of Mr Gayford and his _confrères_ are right,
we have arrived at a law in physiological science equally new and
surprising--that the digestive powers of animals increase in a compound
inverse ratio to the capacity of the digestive organs!
[9] _Scotsman_, February 12, 1848.
[10]
| | || || |
| | 1846. || 1847. || |
| | || || Per cent. |
| | Total | Game || Total | Game ||(both years.)|
|Counties. | cases. | cases.|| cases. | cases. || |
| +--------+-------++--------+--------++-------------+
|Aberdeen, | 683 | 2 || 800 | 5 || 0.4 |
|Berwick, | 317 | 10 || 342 | 16 || 3.9 |
|Edinburgh, | 336 | 12 || 475 | 14 || 3.2 |
|Haddington,| 456 | 33 || 572 | 33 || 6.4 |
|Fife, | 862 | 13 || 819 | 6 || 1.1 |
| +--------+-------++--------+--------++-------------+
| Total, | 2654 | 70 || 3008 | 74 || 2.5 |
Compare these facts with the preposterous statements which the latest
orator of the league, Mr M. Crichton, has been repeating to listening
zanies at Greenock, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, that "the commitments
arising from game laws amount to ONE-FOURTH of the whole crime of the
country."
[11] Return of game-law offences during the years 1843-7
| | | | | | |
|Counties. | 1843. | 1844. | 1845. | 1846. | 1847. |
| +-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
|Berwick, | 14 | 8 | 14 | 10 | 16 |
|Edinburgh, | 41 | 48 | 21 | 12 | 14 |
|Haddington, | 35 | 55 | 23 | 33 | 33 |
|Fife, | 30 | 25 | 19 | 13 | 6 |
| +-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| Total, | 120 | 136 | 77 | 68 | 69 |
[12] Evidence, Part i. 1414; ii. 7647, 7651.
[13] Shaw, ii. 147.
DOMINIQUE.
A SKETCH FROM LIFE.
TWO STUDENTS.
At the lower extremity of that ancient street long recognised as the
head and centre of the _Pays Latin_ or scholastic quarter of Paris, and
which, for six centuries, has borne the name of the _Rue de la Harpe_,
within a few doors of the bridge of _St Michel_, and in a room upon the
fifth floor, two young men were seated, on a spring morning of the year
182-. Even had the modest apartment been situated elsewhere than in the
focus of the students' district, its appearance would have prevented
the possibility of mistake as to the character of its inmates. Scanty
furniture, considerably battered, caricatures of student life,
partially veiling the dirty damp-stained paper that blistered upon
the walls, which were also adorned by a pair of foils, a cracked
guitar, and a set of castanets; a row of pegs supporting pipes, empty
bottles in one corner, ponderous octavos thickly coated with dust in
another, told a tale confirmed by the exterior of the occupants of the
apartment. One of these, a young man of two-and-twenty, was evidently
at home, for his feet were thrust into slippers, once embroidered, a
Greek cap covered his head, and a tattered dressing-gown of pristine
magnificence enveloped his slender and active figure. His features were
regular and intelligent, and he had the dark fiery eyes, clustering
black hair, and precociously abundant beard of a native of southern
France. His companion, a young Norman, had nothing particularly
noticeable in his countenance, save a broad open brow and a character
of much shrewdness and perspicacity--qualities possessed in a high
degree by a majority of his fellow provincials. His dress was one of
those nondescript eccentric coats and conical broad-leafed hats at all
times particularly affected by French _studiosi_.
The two young men were seated at either extremity of the low sill of
a tall French window, thrown wide open to admit the pleasant spring
sunshine, into which they puffed, from capacious pipes, wreaths of
thin blue smoke. Their conversation turned upon a crime--or rather a
series of crimes--which occasioned, at that particular moment, much
excitement in Paris, and which will still be remembered by those
persons upon the tablets of whose memory the lapse of a quarter of a
century does not act as a spunge. About three years previously, a young
man named Gilbert Gaudry, of respectable family, liberal education,
and good reputation, had been tried and convicted for the murder of
an uncle, by whose death he largely inherited. The accused man was
in debt, and his embarrassed circumstances prevented his marrying a
woman to whom he was passionately attached; his uncle had recently
refused him pecuniary assistance, upon which occasion Gaudry was heard
to express himself harshly and angrily. Many other circumstances
concurred to throw upon him the odium of the crime; and, altogether,
the evidence, although entirely circumstantial, was so strong against
him, that, in spite of his powerful appeal and solemn denial, the judge
condemned him to death. The sentence had been commuted to the galleys
for life. Three years passed, and the real murderer was discovered--a
discharged servant of the murdered man, who, at the trial, had given
important evidence against Gaudry. The guillotine did its work on the
right offender, and Gaudry's sentence was reversed. But three years
of slavery and opprobrium, of shame, horror, and gnawing sense of
injustice, had wrought terribly upon the misjudged man, inspiring him
with a blind and burning thirst of revenge. Almost his first act, on
finding himself at liberty, was to stab, in broad daylight, and in the
open street, the judge who had condemned him. This time there could be
no question of his guilt, and he would inevitably have been condemned
to death; but, before his trial, he found means of hanging himself in
his cell. This last tragical and shocking incident had occurred but
two days previously, and now furnished the embryo jurists with a theme
for animated discussion. Without vindicating the wretched murderer
and suicide, the young Norman was disposed to find an extenuating
circumstance in the unjust punishment he had endured. But his friend
scouted such leniency, and, taking up high ground, maintained that no
criminal was baser than he who, the victim of judicial error, revenged
himself upon the magistrate who had decided according to the best of
his judgment and conscience, but who, sharing the liability to err of
every human judge, was misled by deceitful appearances or perjured
witnesses.
"Argue it as you will," cried Dominique Lafon; "be plausible and
eloquent, bring batteries of sophisms to the attack, you cannot breach
my solid position. Excuse and extenuation are alike in vain. I repeat
and maintain, that to make a magistrate personally responsible for his
judgments, be they just or unjust, so long as he has kept within the
line of his duty, and acted according to his conscience, is revenge of
the basest and most criminal description."
"Bear in mind," replied Henry la Chapelle, "that I attempt not to
justify the unhappy Gaudry. All I assert is, that injustice excites in
the breast of every man, even of the gentlest, hatred against him by
whom the injustice is done. And its frequent repetition, or the long
continuance of the suffering it occasions, will ultimately provoke,
in nine cases out of ten, an outbreak of revengeful fury. The heart
becomes embittered, the judgment blinded, the mild and beautiful
injunctions of Scripture are forgotten or disregarded, in the gust of
passion and vindictive rage. To offer the left cheek when the right
has been buffeted, is, of all divine precepts, the most difficult
to follow. A man ruined, tortured, or disgraced by injustice, looks
to the sentence, not to the intention, of his judge; taxes him with
precipitation, prejudice, or over-severity, and views revenge as
a right rather than a crime. Doubtless there are exceptions--men
whose Christian endurance would abide by them even unto death; but,
believe me, they are few, very few. The virtues of Job are rare; and
rancour, the vile weed, chokes, in our corrupt age, the meek flower,
resignation."
"A man to whom injustice is really done," said Dominique, "may console
himself with the consciousness of his innocence, which an act of
rancorous revenge would induce many to doubt. The suffering victim
finds sympathy; the fierce avenger excites horror and reprobation."
"Mere words, my dear fellow," replied la Chapelle. "Fine phrases, and
nothing else. You are a theorist, pleading against human nature. What
logic is this? Undeserved punishment is far more difficult to endure
than merited castigation; and an act of revenge should rather plead
in favour of the innocence of him who commits it. In a criminal, the
consciousness that he merited his punishment would leave less room
for hatred than for shame; it would excite vexation at his ill luck,
rather than enduring anger against his judge. There would be exceptions
and variations, of course, according to the moral idiosyncracy of the
individual. It is impossible to establish a mathematical scale for
the workings of human passions. I repeat that I do not justify such
revenge, but I still maintain that to seek it is natural to man, and
that many men, even with less aggravation than was given to Gaudry,
might not have sufficient resolution and virtue to resist the impulse."
"You have but a paltry opinion of your fellow-creatures," said
Dominique. "I am glad to think better of them. And I hold him a weak
slave to the corruption of our nature, who has not strength to repress
the impulse to a deed his conscience cannot justify."
"Admirable in principle," said la Chapelle, smiling, "but difficult
in practice. You yourself, my dear Dominique, who now take so lofty
a tone, and who feel, I am quite sure, exactly as you speak--you
yourself, if I am not greatly mistaken in your character, would be the
last man to sit down quietly under injustice. Your natural ardour and
impetuosity would soon upset your moral code."
"Never!" vehemently exclaimed Dominique. "La Chapelle, never will I
suffer my passions thus to subdue my reason! What gratification of
revenge can ever compensate the loss of that greatest of blessings,
a pure and tranquil conscience? What peace of mind could I hope for,
after permitting such discord between my principles and my actions? La
Chapelle, you wrong me by the thought."
"Well, well," replied his friend, "I may be wrong, and at any rate I
reason in the abstract rather than personally to you. I heartily wish
you never may suffer wrong, or be tempted to revenge. But remember, my
friend, safety is not in over-confidence. The severest assaults are for
the strongest towers."
A knock at the room-door interrupted the conversation. It was the
porter of the lodging-house, bringing a letter that had just arrived
for Dominique. On recognising the handwriting of the address, and the
postmark of Montauban, the young man uttered a cry of pleasure. It was
from home, from his mother. He hastily tore it open. But as he read,
the smile of joy and gratified affection faded from his features, and
was replaced by an expression of astonishment, indignation, grief.
Scarcely finishing the letter, he crumpled it in his hand with a
passionate gesture, and stripping off his dressing-gown began hastily
to dress. With friendly solicitude la Chapelle observed his varying
countenance.
"No bad news, I hope?" he inquired.
For sole reply, Dominique threw him the letter.
MOTHER AND SON.
Dominique Lafon was the son of a man noted for his democratic
principles, who, after holding high provincial office under the
Republic and the Consulate, resigned his functions in displeasure,
when Napoleon grasped an emperor's sceptre, and retired to his native
town of Montauban, where he since had lived upon a modest patrimony.
Under Napoleon, Pascal Lafon had been unmolested; but when the Bourbons
returned, his name, prominent during the last years of the eighteenth
century, rendered him the object of a certain _surveillance_ on the
part of the police of the Restoration. On the occasion of more than
one republican conspiracy, real or imaginary, spies had been set upon
him, and endeavours made to prove him implicated. Once he had even been
conducted before a tribunal, and had undergone a short examination.
Nothing, however, had been elicited that in any way compromised him;
and in a few hours he was again at liberty, before his family knew
of his brief arrest. In reality, Lafon, although still an ardent
republican, was entirely guiltless of plotting against the monarchy,
which he deemed too firmly consolidated to be as yet shaken. France,
he felt, had need of repose before again entering the revolutionary
arena. His firm faith still was, that a time would come when she would
dismiss her kings for ever, and when pure democracy would govern the
land. But before that time arrived, his eyes, he believed, would be
closed in death. He was no conspirator, but he did not shun the society
of those who were; and, moreover, he was not sufficiently guarded in
the expression of his republican opinions and Utopian theories. Hence
it came that, like the Whig in Claverhouse's memoranda, he had a triple
red cross against his name in the note-book of the Bourbon police, who,
at the time now referred to, had been put upon the alert by the recent
assassination of the Duke of Berri. Although the circumstances of that
crime, and the evidence upon Louvel's trial, combined to stamp the
atrocious deed as the unaided act of a fanatic, without accomplices or
ulterior designs, the event had provoked much rigid investigation of
the schemes of political malcontents throughout France; and in several
districts and towns, magistrates and heads of police had been replaced,
as lax and lukewarm, by men of sterner character. Amongst other
changes, the Judge of Instruction at Montauban had had a successor
given him. The new magistrate was preceded by a reputation of great
vigilance and severity--a reputation he lost no time in justifying. By
the aid of a couple of keen Parisian police agents of the _Procureur
du Roi_, whom he stimulated to increased activity, he soon got upon
the scent of a republican conspiracy, of which Montauban was said to
be a principal focus. Various reports were abroad as to the manner in
which Monsieur Noell, the new judge, had obtained his information. Some
said, the plotters had been betrayed by the mistress of one of them,
in a fit of jealous fury at a fancied infidelity of her lover; others
declared, that hope of reward had quickened the invention of a police
spy, who, despairing of discovering a conspiracy, had applied himself
to fabricate one. Be that as it might, a number of arrests took place,
and, amongst others, that of Dominique's father. The intelligence of
this event was conveyed to the young student in a few despairing lines
from his mother, whose health, already very precarious, had suddenly
given way under the shock of her husband's imprisonment. She wrote from
a sick-bed, imploring her son to lose no time in returning to Montauban.
Gloomy were the forebodings of Dominique as the mail rattled him over
the weary leagues of road between Paris and Montauban. Yet, when he
reached home, he half hoped to be greeted by his father's friendly
voice, for, himself convinced of his innocence, he could not believe
the authorities would be long in recognising it. He was disappointed.
The sorrowful mien of the domestic who opened the door told a tale of
misfortune.
"Oh, Monsieur Dominique!" said the man, an old servant, who had known
the student from his cradle, "the house is not wont to be so sad when
you return."
"My mother! where is my mother?" cried Dominique. The next instant he
was at her bedside, clasping her poor thin fingers, and gazing in agony
on her emaciated features. A few days of intense alarm and anxiety,
acting on an exquisitely susceptible organisation, had done the work
of months of malady. A slow fever was in her veins, undermining her
existence. Dominique shuddered at sight of her sunken temples, and of
the deep dark furrows below her eyes. It seemed as if the angel of
death had already put his stamp upon that beloved countenance. But he
concealed his mental anguish, and spoke cheeringly to the invalid.
She told him the particulars of his father's arrest. She had already
written to some friends, sent for others, and had done all in her power
to ascertain exactly the offences of which Lafon was accused; but the
persons who had made the inquiries had been put off with generalities,
and none had obtained access to the prisoner, who was in solitary
confinement.
Dominique Lafon was tenderly attached to both his parents. Upon him,
their only child, their entire affection was concentrated and lavished.
They had made him their companion even from his earliest years, had
tended him with unwearying solicitude through his delicate infancy,
had devoted themselves to his education when he grew older, and had
consented with difficulty and regret to part from him, when his arrival
at man's estate rendered it desirable he should visit the capital for
the conclusion of his studies. Dominique repaid their care with devoted
love. His father's consistency and strength of character inspired
him with respect; he listened to his precepts with veneration and
gratitude; but he idolised his mother, whose feminine graces and tender
care were intertwined with the sweetest reminiscences of childhood's
happy days. He now strove to repay some portion of his debt of filial
love by the most unwearying attendance at the invalid's pillow. His
arrival brought a gleam of joy and hope to the sick woman's brow,
but the ray was transient, and quickly faded. The vital flame had
sunk too low to revive again permanently. She grew weaker and weaker,
and felt that her hour approached. But her spirit, so soon to appear
before her Maker, yet clung to an earthly love. Whilst striving to
fix her thoughts on things heavenly, they still dwelt upon him by
whose side she had made life's checkered pilgrimage. She wrung her
hands in agony at the thought that she must leave the world without
bidding him a last farewell. She asked but a moment to embrace him
who, for five-and-twenty years, had been her guardian and protector,
her tenderest friend and companion. Dominique could not endure the
spectacle of her grief. He left the house to use every endeavour to
obtain for her the indulgence she so ardently desired.
The first person to whom he applied was the Judge of Instruction,
Monsieur Noell. Provided with a medical certificate of his mother's
dying state, he obtained admission to that magistrate's cabinet. He
found a tall thin man, with harsh strongly marked features, and a
forbidding expression of countenance. The glazed stare of his cold
gray eyes, and the cruel lines about his mouth, chilled Dominique's
hopes, and almost made him despair of success. The youth preferred
his request, however, with passionate earnestness, imploring that his
father might be allowed to leave his prison for a single hour, under
good guard, to visit the bedside of his expiring wife, in presence of
such witnesses as the authorities would think proper to name. The reply
to this prayer was a formal and decided negative. Until the prisoner
Lafon had undergone a second examination, no one could be admitted to
see him under any pretext whatever. That examination was not to take
place for at least a week. Dominique was very sure, from what the
physicians had told him, that his mother could not survive for a third
of that time.
The frigid manner and unsympathising tone of the magistrate, and
the uncourteous brevity of his refusal, grated so unpleasantly upon
the irritated feelings of the student, that he had difficulty in
restraining a momentary anger. In less imminent circumstances, his
pride would have prevented his persisting in a petition thus unkindly
rejected, but the thought of his dying mother brought patience and
humility to his aid. Warmly, but respectfully, he reiterated his suit.
The magistrate was a widower, but he had children, to whom report said
he was devotedly attached. Harsh and rigid in his official duties,
in his domestic circle he was said to be the tenderest of fathers.
Dominique had heard this, and availed of it in pleading his suit.
"You have children, sir!" he said; "you can picture to yourself the
grief you would feel were your deathbed unblessed by their presence.
How doubly painful must be the parting agony, when the ear is unsoothed
by the voice of those best beloved, when no cherished hand is there
to prop the sinking head, and close the eyes for ever on this world
and its sufferings! Refuse not my father the consolation of a last
interview with his dying wife! Have compassion on my poor mother's
agony! Suffer her to breathe her last between the two beings who share
all her affection! So may your own deathbed be soothed by the presence
of those you most dearly love!"
Doubtless Monsieur Noell's ear was well used to such pleadings, and
his heart was hardened by a long course of judicial severity. His
glance lost nothing of its habitual cold indifference, as he replied to
Dominique's passionate entreaties with a decided negative.
"I must repeat my former answer," he said; "I neither can nor will
grant the indulgence you require. And now I will detain you no longer,
as you may perhaps make use of your time to greater advantage in other
quarters."
He rose from his chair, and remained standing till Dominique left
the room. The tone of his last words had wellnigh crushed hope in
the young man's bosom. But as long as a possibility remained, the
student pursued it. He betook himself to the _Procureur du Roi_, whose
office constituted him public prosecutor in cases of this kind. That
functionary declared himself incompetent, until the prisoner should
have undergone another examination. Until then, the only appeal from
the judge was to the minister of justice. Dominique instantly drew
up and forwarded a petition; but before it reached Paris, his mother
breathed her last. She met her death, preceded and attended by acute
sufferings, with the resignation of a martyr. But even after the
last sacrament of her religion had been administered, and when she
earnestly strove to fix her mind on eternity, to the exclusion of
things temporal, the thought of her husband, so long and tenderly
beloved, and absent at this supreme hour, intruded itself upon her
pious meditations, brought tears to her eyes, and drew heartrending
sobs from her bosom; her last sigh was for him, her latest breath
uttered his name. This fervent desire, so cruelly thwarted, those tears
of deferred hope and final profound disappointment, were inexpressibly
painful to contemplate. Upon Dominique, whose love for his mother was
so deep and holy, they made a violent impression. Bitter were his
feelings as he sat beside her couch when the spirit had fled, and gazed
upon her clay-cold features, whereon there yet lingered a grieved and
suffering expression. And later, when the earth had received her into
its bosom, that pallid and sorrowful countenance was ever before his
eyes. In his dreams he heard his mother's well-known voice, mournfully
pronouncing the name of her beloved husband, and praying, as she had
done in the last hours of her life, that she might again behold him
before she departed. Nor were these visions dissipated by daylight.
They recurred to his excited imagination, and kindled emotions of
fierce hatred towards the man who had had it in his power to smooth his
mother's passage from life to death, and who had wantonly refused the
alleviation. Nay more; convinced of his father's innocence, Dominique
considered the judge who had thrown him into prison as in some sort
his mother's murderer. He had accelerated her decease, and thrown gall
into the cup it is the lot of every mortal to drain. The physicians
had declared anxiety of mind to be the immediate cause of her death.
Dominique brooded over this declaration, and over the misfortunes that
had so suddenly overtaken him, until he came to consider M. Noell as
much an assassin as if he had struck a dagger into his mother's heart.
"What matter," he thought, "whether the wound be dealt to body or to
soul, so long as it slays?" He had nothing to distract his thoughts
from dwelling upon and magnifying the wrongs that had deprived him
of both parents, one by death, the other by an imprisonment whose
termination he could not foresee. At times his melancholy was broken by
bursts of fury against him he deemed the cause of his misfortunes.
"Could I but see him die!" he would exclaim, "the cold-blooded
heartless tyrant--die alone, childless, accursed, without a friendly
hand to wipe the death-sweat from his face! Then, methinks, I could
again be happy, when his innocent victim was thus revenged. Alas, my
mother!--my poor, meek, long-suffering mother,--must your death go
unrequited? For what offence was your life taken as atonement? By what
vile distortion of justice did this base inquisitor visit upon your
innocent head a transgression that never was committed?"
Meanwhile the captivity of the elder Lafon was prolonged. A second
examination relaxed nothing of his jailor's severity, and his son's
applications to see him were all rejected. Dominique wrote to his
father, but he received no answer; and he afterwards learned that his
letter had not been delivered when sent, but had been detained by
Noell, who, finding nothing criminatory in its contents, had subjected
it, with characteristic suspicion, to chemical processes, in hopes
to detect writing with sympathetic ink, and had finally made it
accessory to an attempt to extort a confession from the prisoner. This
information, obtained from an understrapper of the prison by means of a
large bribe, raised Dominique's exasperation to the highest pitch.
"Gracious Heaven!" he exclaimed, "are such things to be endured in
silence and submission? Has human justice iron scourges for nominal
offences,--honours and rewards for real crimes? On a false accusation
my father pines in a dungeon, whilst my mother's murderer walks
scatheless and exalted amongst his fellows; but if the laws of man are
impotent to avenge her death, who shall blame her son for remembering
her dying agony, and requiting it on those who aggravated her
sufferings?"
And he walked forth, pondering vengeance. Unconsciously his steps
took the direction of the prison. Long he stood, with folded arms and
lowering brow, gazing at the small grated aperture that gave light
and air to his father's cell, and hoping to see his beloved parent
look out and recognise him. He gazed in vain: twilight came, night
followed, no one appeared at the window. Dominique knew not that it
was high above the prisoner's reach. He returned home, fancying his
father ill, nourishing a thousand bitter thoughts, and heaping up
fresh hatred against the author of so much misery. That night Michel,
the old servant, came twice to his room door, to see what ailed him,
since, instead of retiring to rest, he unceasingly paced the apartment.
Dominique dismissed the faithful fellow to his bed, and resumed
his melancholy walk. But in the morning he was so pale and haggard
that Michel slipped out to ask the family physician to call in _by
accident_. When he returned, Dominique had left the house. In great
alarm--for his young master's gloomy despondency at once suggested fear
of suicide--Michel tracked his steps. His fears proved unfounded. With
some trouble he ascertained that Dominique had quitted the town on the
top of a passing diligence, with a valise for sole baggage, and without
informing any one of the object of his journey.
THE DOUBLE DUEL.
Antony Noell, the judge, had three children, and report lied not when
it said that he was tenderly attached to them. A harsh and unfeeling
man in his official capacity, and in the ordinary affairs of life,
all the softer part of his nature seemed to have resolved itself into
paternal affection. His two sons were students at the university of
Toulouse; his youngest child, a blooming maiden of twelve, still
brightened his home and made his heart joyful, although she soon was
to leave him to finish her education in a convent. The two students
were gay handsome lads, but somewhat dissipated; fonder of the bottle
and the billiard-room than of grave lectures and dry studies. They
were in small favour with their pedagogues, but in high repute with
their fellow collegians; whilst peaceable citizens and demure young
ladies regarded them with mingled aversion, interest, and curiosity, on
account of certain mad pranks, by which, during their first half-year's
residence, they had gained a certain notoriety in the quiet city of
Toulouse.
It happened one night, as the brothers came both flushed with play and
wine from their accustomed coffeehouse on the Place du Capitole, that
Vincent, the elder of the two, stumbled over the feet of a man who sat
upon one of the benches placed outside the establishment. The passage
through the benches and tables was narrow; and the stranger, having
thrust his legs nearly across it, had little reason to complain of the
trifling offence offered him. Nevertheless he jumped to his feet and
fiercely taxed young Noell with an intentional insult. Noell, full of
good humour and indifferent wine, and taking his interlocutor for a
fellow student, made a jesting reply, and seizing one of the stranger's
arms, whilst his brother Martial grasped the other, dragged him into
the lamp-light to see who he was. But the face they beheld was unknown
to them; and scarcely had they obtained a glimpse at it when its owner
shook them off, applying to them at the same time a most injurious
epithet. The students would have struck him, but he made a pace
backwards, and, seizing a heavy chair which he whirled over his head as
though it had been a feather, he swore he would dash out the brains of
the first who laid a finger on him.
"I do not fight like a water-carrier," he said, "with fists and
feet; but if you are as ready with your swords as you are with your
insolence, you shall not long await satisfaction."
And offering a card, which was at once accepted, he received two in
return. The disputants then separated; and as soon as the Noells turned
out of the square, they paused beneath a lamp to examine the card they
had received. Inscribed upon it was the name of Dominique Lafon.
It was too late, when this quarrel occurred, for further steps to
be taken that night; but early on the following morning Dominique's
second, a young lawyer whom he had known during his studies at Paris,
had an interview with the friends appointed by the Noells to act on
their behalf. The latter anticipated a duel with swords, and were
surprised to find that Dominique, entitled, as the insulted party,
to fix the weapon, selected the more dangerous and less usual one of
pistols. They could not object, however, and the meeting was fixed for
the next day; the arrangement being that both brothers should come upon
the ground, and that, if Dominique was unhurt in the first encounter,
the second duel should immediately succeed it.
In a secluded field, to the right of the pleasant road from Toulouse
to Albi, and at no great distance from the tumulus on whose summit a
stone pillar commemorates Soult's gallant resistance to Wellington's
conquering forces, the combatants met at the appointed hour, and
saluted each other with cold courtesy. Dominique was pale, but his
hand and eye were steady, and his pulse beat calmly. The two Noells
were cheerful and indifferent, and bore themselves like men to whom
encounters of this kind were no novelty. The elder brother took the
first turn. The seconds asked once more if the affair could not be
peaceably arranged; but, receiving no answer, they made the final
arrangements. Two peeled willow rods were laid upon the ground, six
yards apart. At ten yards from either of these the duellists were
placed, making the entire distance between them six and twenty yards;
and it was at their option, when the seconds gave the word, either to
advance to the barrier before firing, or to fire at once, or from any
intervening point.
The word was given, and the antagonists stepped out. Vincent Noell took
but two paces, halted and fired. He had missed. Dominique continued
steadily to advance. When he had taken five paces, the seconds looked
at each other, and then at him, as if expecting him to stop. He took no
notice, and moved on. It was a minute of breathless suspense. In the
dead silence, his firm tread upon the grass was distinctly audible.
He paused only when his foot touched the willow wand. Then he slowly
raised his arm, and fired.
The whirling smoke prevented him for an instant from discerning the
effect of his shot, but the hasty advance of the seconds and of two
surgeons who had accompanied them to the field, left him little doubt
that it had told. It had indeed done so, and with fatal effect. The
unhappy Vincent was bathed in his blood. The surgeons hastened to
apply a first dressing, but their countenances gave little hope of a
favourable result.