And by Stat. 3 Geo. 1. c. 11. no Lord of a Manor is to make or appoint any person to be a Gamekeeper, with power to take and kill Game, unless such person be qualified by law so to do, or be truly and properly a servant to the Lord, or immediately employed to take and kill game, for the sole use or benefit of the said Lord; and any person not qualified, or not employed as aforesaid, who under pretence of any qualification from any Lord of a Manor, shall take and kill, or keep or use any dogs to kill or destroy game, shall for every such offence, incur such penalties as are inflicted by Stats. 5 Ann. c. 14. 9 Ann. c. 25.-By this last Statute, no Gamekeeper can qualify any person to kill game, or keep dogs, &c. for that purpose.

By Stats. 25 Geo. 3. c. 50. 31 Geo. 3. c. 21. every deputation of a Gamekeeper shall be entered with the Clerk of the Peace of the county in which the manor lies, and for a Certificate therefore shall be charged one guinea.

On the appointment of a new Gamekeeper, a new certificate must be taken out, and the persons acting under the old certificate, shall be liable to the penalties of this act.

Gamekeepers are enumerated among the different descriptions of servants, chargeable with the duty under 25 Geo. 3. c. 43.

ADJUDGED CASES.

If a Gamekeeper shoot an unqualified person's dog, who thereupon shoots the Gamekeepers, and behaves insolently, the Judge will direct very considerable damage. 2 Atkyns' Rep. 190.

Altho' by Stat. 22 & 23 Car. 2. c. 25. s. 2. A Gamekeeper (so authorized,) may search for dogs and engines, and seize the same for the use of the Lord, or destroy them. Yet it hath been adjudged, that an authority from the Lord of the Manor is not of itself sufficient for this purpose, but that he ought to have a warrant from a Justice of Peace. Comberbach 183. Carpenter v. Adams. At least it may be safe to have such a warrant, especially if any house are to be entered and searched; for it would be to allow too great a stretch of power to Gamekeepers, to permit them, in their vigilant discretion, to search whatever houses or places they should think proper, as also to constitute them Judges, whether the person falling under their suspicion, is or is not qualified to kill game.

Rogers v. Carter. The plaintiff being Gamekeeper within the manor of Ringwood, in beating for game within the said manor, sprung a covey of partridges, which he shot at within the said manor. They took a second flight, and he pursued them out of the manor, but could not find them; as he was returning to the manor of Ringwood, he was met by the defendant, who asked if he had a qualification? The plaintiff answered I have a deputation from the Lord of the Manor of Ringwood. The defendant replied, you are now out of that manor, and demanded his gun, and took it from him. The plaintiff did not shoot out of the manor, but was three quarters of a mile out of the manor, with his gun and dog, with an intention to shoot at game. BY THE

COURT.-The question is, whether the Justice had a right to take the plaintiff's gun from him, while he was sporting for the purpose of killing game out of the manor of Ringwood? And we are all of opinion he had no such right. If he had killed Game where he was not a Gamekeeper, he might have been convicted in the penalty of 51. but he was entitled to keep and have dogs, gun, and nets, any where, and a Gamekeeper's gun cannot be seized, either in going to, or returning from the manor, or in any other place. 2 Wils. 387.

The Lord of a Hundred or Wapentake, cannot grant a deputation to a Gamekeeper. The Earl of Ailesbury v. Pattison. 1 Dougl. 28.

No Lord of a Manor can grant to another person, the power of appointing a Gamekeeper, without a conveyance, also of the manor itself. Such a power is a mere emanation of the manor, and is inseparable from it. A right to a manor cannot be tried in a penal action under the game laws. Calcraft v. Gibbs. 5 T. R. 19.

In the case of Jones v. Smart, WILLES, J. said, that the Lord of a Manor is certainly not an Esquire by virtue of his manor, though in common acceptation he be considered as such; and that no Lord of a Manor under that rank, can appoint a Gamekeeper, whatever his estate may be. 1 T. R. 44.

It seems Gentlemen receiving deputations to be Gamekeepers, are not chargeable with the duty En servants, under 25 Gea. 3. c. 43. Several Lords of Manors granted deputations to divers gentlemen to be Gamekeepers within their respective manors; and being surcharged for the said Gentlemen Gamekeepers, they appealed against the surchage. The Surveyor urged, that in the terms of the act, all Gamekeepers are rateable without distinction or exception; and that they therefore, in their present capacity as Gamekeepers, could have no pretence to any exemption; but the Commissioners were of opinion, that the said Gentlemen, considered as Gamekeepers, did not come within the meaning of the act as servants, and therefore not rateable, and with that opinion, the Judges concurred.

By the act passed in the year 1716, it is stated, that "Whereas it is become usual for lords of manors to grant deputations to the farmers, tenants, and occupiers of lands, to be gamekeepers, with power to kill game; which practice tends to the destruction of the same : for remedy whereof, be it enacted, that no lord of a manor shall appoint any gamekeeper, with power to kill game, unless such person be qualified by the laws of the land so to do; or unless such person be truly and properly a servant to the said lord, or immediately employed to kill game, for the sole use of the said lord." It appears, therefore, as plain as any enacting words can make it, that gamekeepers, unless qualified by the possession of one hundred pounds a year, real property, are liable to all the penalties against sporting illegally; and the lords of manors granting deputations to such farmers, tenants, or occupiers of land, are themselves liable to the penalty of not entering them annually with the assessors, and paying the tax on each gamekeeper, agreeably to the express words in the act, taxing male-servants. The master's

appointment is destroyed by a two-fold species of fraud against the revenue; first, by the master not paying for his gamekeeper as a servant; secondly, in taking out a guinea licence for him as a gamekeeper, when the person ought to have a three guinea certificate, to warrant his attempting to sport at all. One guinea only is paid by this manoeuvre, when the revenue is entitled to four. The Stamp Office would do well to look to this; which the parochial returns of servants by their masters, and their own list of gamekeepers certificates, would render no difficult task; and by an act passed the tenth of May 1798, a penalty of £30. is inflicted on any person omitting to deliver in a list containing the greatest number of servants by him retained or kept. By the same act a duty of six shillings is payable for every greyhound, hound, pointer, setting-dog, or spaniel, lurcher, or terrier; and a duty of four shillings payable on every dog, (not being a greyhound, hound, setting-dog, spaniel, lurcher, or terrier,) where one such dog and no more, be kept. And a penalty of £50. against any person wilfully omitting any description in his list of dogs, to be by him delivered in according to the act.

The sentimental novel writer of the present day, without invention or real knowledge of mankind, dresses up some narrative with affected maxims of exquisite sensibility, and endeavours to influence the passions, and mislead the understandings, of the rising generation, with direful stories of the ingenuous Peasant, torn from his weeping Parents or his distracted Bride, and either hurried into a loathsome dungeon, or banished to an unhealthy climate, only for the murder of a Hare or a Partridge. In contradiction to these fictitious tales of woe, hear the truth from the remarks of our JUDGES almost every Circuit, upon the offences which Poaching and Smuggling are sure to inculcate and cherish, until at length brought under their cognizance; unfortunately their admonitions have little weight to deter from the practice, however verified by the too frequent exercise of even capital punishment, as its consequence. A remedy should be seriously tried, which should attach upon the receiver of the spoil, and if the penalty of five pounds for destroying a single Partridge, &c. be inflicted upon the actual offender in catching it, this sum ought to be multiplied five fold to the person who purchases it, be he whom he may. Pass a law to this effect, and allow the informer to be a sufficient evidence against the buyer, and the whole penalty to go to him, the traffic will be checked, and the public morals be benefited, however less luxuriously the appetites of some parts of the community may be regaled and pampered.

That laws should be made to prevent the man whose family depends entirely on his labour for support, from quitting his flail, his plough, or his spade, to range the woods for a precarious subsistence by the destruction of animals, must be conceded by all, who contribute to the fund which is exacted to support the indigent in this country; and the writer, who paints in his closet the hardship of the Husbandman in being restrained from capturing these fera nature, would, in his parlour, be amongst the foremost to grumble at the demand of an increased rate, occasioned by the families of half a dozen Poachers coming suddenly upon the parish purse, to which he paid.

Of Poachers committing murder, there have been many instances; one some few years since at Lord BUCKINGHAMSHIRE's in Norfolk. In 1798 the Duke of RICHMOND's life was threatened,

and fire denounced against his Grace's and other Gentlemen's property; for discovery of the offenders, a reward of 2,800l. was offered upon their conviction. In Norfolk it has been known, that the Norwich Poachers have gone so numerously and well armed, that when the keepers of the different manors upon which they have entered, and their assistants, have opposed them, they have candidly told them the business they came upon, and their determination to effect it by force, and if the keepers chose to begin the engagement, they were properly prepared, and would not be the last to leave off. With these facts, and a very numerous catalogue of a similar complection, a Gentleman well known for his general philanthropy, asks "If ever the character or sufferings of a real systematic Poacher, could ever entitle him to a tear, even from that most sentimental of all sentimental heroes, the Man of Feeling himself?" MENOU's Soldiers in Egypt, were not more blood thirsty when primed with brandy and gunpowder, before the attack upon what they termed the English school-boys, than our Poachers, when starting in an evening, after being muddled all day in an Alehouse, are ripe for any mischief that they can perpetrate. Of the extent of a Poacher's labours in his vocation, a curious display was made in 1793, upon searching the house of a farmer in Yorkshire, when a great quantity of snares and other implements were found, and fifteen hundred Hare skins, to all appearance killed that season; and, to crown the whole, the culprit was the constable of the parish, and openly extremely alert against offenders of his own class.

In 1795 at Barnstaple, in Devonshire, at the age of 96, died Mrs. Barbara Snellgrove, the most noted female Poacher (until upwards of 94,) that the century, or perhaps any preceding one, ever produced; the skill of Granny Bab, (the name she was known by,) in taking all kinds of Game was never surpassed; she frequently boasted of selling fish to Gentlemen taken out of their own ponds, and game from their own manors; her coffin and shroud she kept in her apartments twenty years previous to her decease; mementos seldom even in the recollection of Male Poachers, and for the most part provided for them at the Parish expence.

Woodcocks,

altho' not cognizable by the Game Laws, are Birds which afford the Sportsman as much, or perhaps more diversion, than any that are objects of their immediate protection.

Woodcocks are birds of passage, and appear about Michaelmas, (one was shot in Lincolnshire, in July 1801, but this probably was a bird bred in the country,) and leave this country in March; they are inhabitants of the Alps, and other high mountains, (where, according to WILLOUGHBY, they continue all Summer ;) also of Norway, Sweden, Polish Prussia, Russia, the northern parts of Europe, Kamtschatka, as well as Iceland, and generally found through the old continent and its