Lord Malmesbury has published a letter on the game laws,
to which the Times has accorded its largest type, but which, we ven- ture to say, is the most muddle-headed letter ever written upon the subject. Lord Malmesbury says rabbits and hares are eatable —which is true about hares always, and about rabbits when there is nothing else to be had—and form an important section of the food supply. And he proves this by three arguments—first, that 150,000 rabbits a week are imported from Belgium ; second, that 30,000,000 rabbit-skins are exported from England every year; and,, third, that the English rabbits yield 37,000 tons of meat. He thinks this final, but has first to prove that the abolition of English game laws would stop rabbits coming from Ostend ; secondly, that the rabbits which furnish the skins could not be kept as in Bel- gium, in the sandy rabbit warrens where nothing else will flourish ; and thirdly, that his 37,000 tons of meat are not fattened on corn worth more than they are. We venture to say that if rabbit-growing pays, rabbits will be grown without game laws, just as fowls are, but grown in their proper places—dunes and sandy wastes—at the cost of men who want them to grow, and not in the fattest corn-lands, at the cost of men who hold them to be vermin.
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