A Bath farmer, William Fletcher, has been beating two young
ladies with a stick for blackberrying in his fields. Their backs were really hurt, painful, and much swollen. He does not appear to have been drunk, but some children had nearly burnt some of his ricks by lighting a fire in the field, and so he thought he would beat the young ladies as a warning to the children. He was fined 40s. and costs, including the solicitor's and surgeon's fees, but lie showed no sign of regret, and proposed to summon the _young ladies for trespass. As the only damages he could have proved would have been the loss of the blackberries, this expe- dient for revenge failed him. Probably William Fletcher's is only a slightly exaggerated instance of that brutal sense of pro- perty, which regards all the rights of others as absolutely ceasing and determining within the limits of a man's own exclusive -dominion.
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