II. CHAP. fighting a duel. Pitt was prime minister of England, Tierney was temporarily leader of the Opposition, when they fought at Wimbledon. Canning and Castlereagh were two of the most prominent members of the Cabinet when they met in 1809. The wound which Canning received did not teach him discretion. On two subsequent occasions he was on the eve of fighting a duel. He challenged Burdett, and Burdett's explanation only averted a meeting. An appeal was made to the Speaker's authority to stop the possibility of a contest between Canning and Brougham. Brougham himself was challenged by Stapylton for some hasty words spoken in contesting Yorkshire in 1830. In 1826 Beaumont and Lambton fought on Bamborough Sands in consequence of some expressions which Beaumont had used on the hustings at Alnwick. Wellington was prime minister of England when he challenged Lord Winchilsea in 1829. The Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Buckingham fought in Kensington Gardens in 1822. Grattan was elected for Dublin in 1800, made a speech against the Union, and fought a duel on the same day. O'Connell had killed his man. A literary quarrel led to Sir A. Boswell's death in a duel in 1822. Jeffrey, the editor of the Edinburgh Review,' was challenged by Moore the poet. Scott, in 1827, was prepared to meet an obscure French officer.1 Intempe rance. Duels, however, frequent as they were, constituted only occasional events in a man's lifetime. Intemperance was the Englishman's everyday fault. Men, indeed, no longer got drunk at night as regularly as they went out hunting or shooting in the morning. But hard drinking was the vice of the nation from the highest to the lowest. To be drunk occasionally was no offence against good breeding. Some persons will recollect Scott's apology for a drunken clergyman: The crime of drunkenness consists not in a man's being in that situation twice or 1 Ann. Reg. 1822, pp. 62, 82. Ibid. 1826, p. 103. Lockhart's Scott, p. 665. 1 thrice in his life, but in the constant and habitual practice of the vice; the distinction between "ebrius" and "ebriosus" being founded on common sense and recognised by law.' George IV., when Prince of Wales, invited the Duke of Norfolk to dinner for the express purpose of making him drunk. The Duke of York drank six bottles of claret at a sitting.2 Claret, however, was only within the reach of dukes and spendthrifts. Taxation had raised its price and restricted its use. Bold and erect the Caledonian stood, Old was his mutton, and his claret good; Let him drink port, the English statesman cried— He drank the poison, and his spirit died.3 CHAP. II. Laws. If drinking were too frequently the country gentle- The Game man's chief pastime at night, hunting and shooting were his chief occupation by day. Neither of these sports were indeed carried on under the conditions which have made them popular since. The land was not drained; the enclosures were small; they were separated by huge shores or fences which no horse could leap; and the coverts or woods were large and near each other. Pace, in its modern sense, was impracticable, and men rode to hounds for the pleasure of seeing them work. The hare, which ran in a circle, became under these circumstances a more popular object of chase than the fox, which ran straight to the nearest covert, from which it taxed the skill of the huntsman to drive him. Shooting, too, was carried on with difficulty with the old flint locks and 1 Lockhart's Scott, p. 57. In Waverley, Bradwardine excuses Balmawhapple by the same distinction, ch. xii. 2 Thackeray's Four Georges, pp. 3 Lockhart's Scott, p. 372. CHAP. II. cumbersome guns of the day; and shooting, in the modern sense of battues, was only beginning to be known. In 1827 Lord Eldon referred in the House of Lords to the objectionable modern practice of collecting game in large quantities for the purpose of battues.' 'Every plantation,' he said on another occasion, was turned into a poultryyard, and a sportsman was thought nothing of unless he could kill his thousand birds a day.'1 The Duke of Gloucester, in 1816, shot 254 head of game in one day at Mr. Coke's of Holkham; 2 and Greville has recorded in his diary a day's sport which would have done credit to these modern times of bloodshed. The spirit of the old forest laws, which the Norman kings had introduced into England, still lingered in the statutes which Parliament had made for the preservation of game. No one, who was not a landowner, was allowed to kill game; no one was entitled to sell game. The common law distinctly recognised that game was the property of the landowner, ratione soli. But, in limitation, and to a certain degree in derogation, of the common law, a variety of statutes subjected to penalties persons who, not having certain qualifications, shall, even upon their own land, kill any of those wild animals which come under the denomination of game.' The qualification to kill game was confined by a statute of Charles II. to persons having lands of inheritance of 100l. per annum, or leases of 150l. (to which were added some other descriptions of personal qualifications), and persons not having such qualifications were not allowed to have or keep game dogs. A subsequent statute of George II. (28 Geo. II., c. 12) carried this system still further; and enacted penalties against unqualified, and finally against qualified, persons who shall buy, sell, or offer to sell, any hare, pheasant, partridge, &c. Similar penalties were enacted against unqualified persons having 'Twiss' Eldon, vol. ii. p. 540; vol. iii. p. 4. 2 Ann. Reg. 1816, p. 193. game in their possession.1 But legislation did not cease with the reign of George II. As late as 1816 an Act, passed without a single word of comment, punished with transportation for seven years any person who should be found by night in any open ground, having in his possession any net or engine for the purpose of taking or destroying any hare, rabbit, or other game. So carelessly was the act drawn that the limits of night were fixed between October and March at from 8 P.M. to 7 A.M., so that, according to this law, even a qualified person, who went out before seven in the morning to shoot game, was liable to be transported as a felon. It was not, however, likely that a qualified person would ever be subjected to these penalties. The law was made to repress poaching, and a poacher's life was regarded with about as much respect as a rabbit's. Spring guns were commonly set in every plantation. In 1821 a farmer, renting about 500 acres of land, was fined for keeping a setter. In 1822 a farmer, coursing hares on his own land, with the permission of his own landlord, was summoned by the keeper of the adjoining landowner for doing so. The adjoining landowner in this particular instance was the Duke of Buckingham, and the farmer was literally convicted by the duke himself, in the duke's private house, at the instance of one of the duke's keepers, and on the evidence of another of his keepers. The forest laws,' Blackstone had written in the previous century, and the passage still remained true, are now mitigated, and by degrees grown entirely obsolete; yet, from this root has sprung a bastard slip, known by the name of the game laws, now arrived to, and wantoning in, the highest vigour: both founded upon the same unreasonable notion of permanent property in wild crea 1 Report of Select Committee of 1816; Ann. Reg., vol. lviii. p. 443. 2 Romilly, vol. iii. p. 275; Hansard, vol. xxxv. p. 339. 3 Ann. Reg. 1822, Chron. p. 8. The case, it is fair to add, was reversed on appeal. ▲ Hansard, N. S. vol. viii. 1292. СНАР. II. СНАР. tures, and both productive of the same tyranny to the commons: but with this difference, that the forest laws established only one mighty hunter throughout the land; the game laws have raised a little Nimrod in every manor,' 1 The severe laws, which Blackstone thus reprobated, might at least have been expected to have led to the effectual preservation of game. They did, however, nothing of the kind. Neither the attitude of Parliament nor the decisions of the county magistrates could induce the people generally to regard poaching as a crime. It is incidentally stated in the 'Black Book' that 12,805 persons were convicted of criminal offences in 1830, and that no less than 1,987 of these convictions were for offences against the game laws.2 Though, too, it was illegal to sell game, it was notorious that game was sold by nearly every poulterer. Laws of the severest character had not even the negative merit of enforcing obedience by their severity.3 The game laws were maintained in the interest of a small body of persons. The incomes of these landowners were not so large as those which their descendants now enjoy. But some members of the upper classes had very considerable rent-rolls. The casual expressions of contemporary writers enable us to form a fair estimate of the cost of living at the commencement of the century. When the loyalty loan was proposed, Lord Colchester said that the outside expenses of the aristocracy were calculated at 6,000l. a year. Sheridan, some years after 1 Blackstone's Commentaries, b. iv. p. 416. 2 Black Book, p. 270. 3 The sale of game was regulated by two Acts passed in the 5th of Anne and the 28th of George II. By the former of these Acts it was illegal for higglers, chapmen, carriers, innkeepers, and victuallers to sell game. By the latter, game keepers were prevented from selling game without the consent of their employers; and all persons, qualified or not, who sold game, were considered chapmen. When any game was found in the house of an unqualified person, it was considered as exposed for sale. See, inter alia, Hansard, vol. xxxv. p. 877. |