Page:The land, the people, and the coming struggle .djvu/15

 determinable in the event of the improvement being insufficient, and extensible on evidence of bonâ fide improvement of more than average character.

All land capable of producing food, and misused for preserving game, should be treated as uncultivated land. The diversion of land in an old country formfrom [sic] the purpose it should fulfil—that of providing life for the many—to the mere providing pleasure for the few, is a crime. The extent to which the preservation of game has been carried in some parts of England and Scotland shows a reckless disregard of human happiness on the part of the landed aristocracy, which bids fair to provoke a fearful retribution. Paragraphs in the newspapers show how almost tame pheasants are driven to the very muzzles of the guns, to be shot down by royal butchers, who have not even the excuse of sport in their wholesale slaughterings.

It is calculated that for the deer forests of Scotland alone nearly two million acres of land—some of it the choicest pasture, much of it valuable land—is entirely lost to the country. Two red deer mean the displacement of a family, and it is, therefore, scarcely wonderful that we should learn that much of the Duke of Sutherland's vast estate is a mere wilderness.

Country members who shun the House of Commons while estimates are voted, and go to dinner when emigration and pauperism are topics for discussion, crowd the benches of St. Stephen's when there is some new Act to be introduced for the better conviction of poachers without evidence, or for the protection of fat rabbits, which eat and spoil crops, against lean farm labourers, who, having not enough to eat, pine alike in physique and intellect.

The Game Laws are a disgrace to our civilisation, and could not stand twelve months were it not for the overwhelming influence of the landed aristocracy in the Legislature. The practice of game preserving is injurious in that, in addition to the land wasted for the preserve, it frequently prevents proper cultivation of surrounding lands, and demoralises and makes criminals of the agricultural labourers, creating for them a kind and degree of crime which would be otherwise unknown.

Poaching, so severely punished, is often actually fostered and encouraged by the agents of the very landholders who sit as Justices of the Peace to punish it. Pheasants' and partridges' eggs are bought to stock preserves; the game-