GUNS rersus GAME-LAWS.
THE Gunmakers made a great noise in the House the other night. They blazed away at the Game-laws, with a brace of petitions,
which were let otr by Messrs. HEATIICOTE Mill WILLIAM BROI7GH.\ NI: but the atihir all ended in smoke. There was no mniselub I, doile,—exeept to Common Sense ; which is so accustomed to be shocked in the House, that the leaden charge of the gun- makers could hardly have done it much more damage had it reached its destination. The gunmakers complain that they can't sell any new guns; they think it odd that then fowling-pieces don't go off: so they' cast about for a cause, and thinking to kill two birds with one shot, fix upon the Game-laws as a mark which all may let fly at. The new Game-act is about as stupid a piece of legislation as ever was enacted by a set of bungling legislators to trim in between the prejudices and feudal rights of the country gentlemen; and we wish the guntnakers had blown it to atoms ; though, like the Cockney sportsman who was returning home with- out one trophy of his skill, they took aim at a scarecrow, merely because it was bedecked with a few feathers. Guns, they argue, are used to kill game; if guns don't sell, game can't be shot; if game is not shot, it must be snared; ergo, poaching prevails more than ever; which is caused by the new Game-laws: Q. E. D.
Sir ROBERT PEEL peeped into the very touchhole of the gun question. His Conservative perception saw in an instant the pro- bable cause of the guns hanging lire. A flash of genius in his brain-pan threw a light upon the secret evil. The innovation of detonating locks must be the cause! Heshould have gone further b.ick into the history of the gun-trade, and have traved the ulti- mate caite to the abolition of matchlocks, and the substitution of tliggers and flint and steel.
But though the gunmakers shot very wide of their mark, the attention of the bystanders was drawn to the object. Mr. WIL- LIAM Booto(uale propesed to remedy the evils of the present system of Game-laws by millsine- goine property. -Here would be charm:lie diversion for the country Justices and the Judges of the Local Courtsl- 13nt whose property is the game to be? The far- mer's, Whose crops supply the partridgos with food; or the land- lord's, over whose estate the birds fly But to return to the gunmakers and their complaint of a falling- off in the ii ado. One would have thought that they might have learnt to trace the relationship of cause and effect nu m, correctly, by merely observing the successien of the shot to the fall of the haminer. As they have not. however, WC must assist them. It is the Batt ties that have knocked up their trade. By taking away the excitement of chance, the sport is destroy-eil. A Cockney in a hen-roost cum id not eonimit more deliberate slaughter. Dr. JOHN- SON'S definition of angling may, with a little modification, apply to the Immo of a ban ue and his sport—a loaded gun, with a fool at one end and a pheasant at the other. There is no chance for the poor bials, unless they should perch upon the guns of their as- sailants. The battues have surfeited the fashionables with killing pheasants, and the connoisseurs of genuine Joe Muttons have lost
their gusto, Hares, and pheasants, and partridges, are still shut, but not by men of fashion who pay or are chargsd sixty or eighty guineas for their guns.
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