The Government has lost no time in keeping its promise
to diminish the evils of the Game Laws. It does not propose this Session to deal with those laws as they affect the com- munity, but to reform them almost completely as they affect the tenant-farmers. The Home Secretary on Thursday, there- fore, obtained leave to bring in a Bill under which the right of killing ground game,—that is, hares and rabbits,—is bestowed upon the tenant and his agents. He cannot sublet them, and the landlord or his friends may still kill them ; ibut he can, if they are a nuisance, keep them down at discretion. The right is, of course, made "inalienable," as without that proviso the landlord would contract himself out of the law. Mr. Chaplin, who represented the Tories in the matter, did not seriously oppose, though he grumbled that more hares and rabbits would be preserved than ever, the tenants looking to their own shooting, and the Bill will doubtless pass. It would never have been brought forward, but for the accession of the Liberals to power ; and could not pass the Peers now, but that landlords are alarmed at the irritation of their tenants. The result, we imagine, will be in most districts that the hares will be pre-
served for coursing, that the rabbits will be almost extirpated, and that poaching will become an offence in tenants' eyes.
Those are excellent results for everybody, except the unlucky hares, who mast wish ardently that they were slower- footed.
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