When a hare is put up by the beating dog she goes straight to
her doom.
It seems marvellous that such lawless desperadoes should be hanging
about London; but there they are, and they will have successors so long
as there is a head of game on the ground. The men are disreputable
loafers; they care only for drink and the pleasures of idleness. I grant
that. My only business is to show what a strange secret life, what a
strange secret society, may be studied almost within sight of St.
Paul's.
The very best and most daring poacher I know lives within
five-and-twenty minutes' journey from Waterloo. You may keep on framing
stringent game laws as long as you choose, but you cannot kill an
overmastering instinct.
I am not prepared to say, "Abolish the Game Laws;" but I do say that
those laws cause wild, worthless fellows to be regarded as heroes. No
stigma whatever attaches to a man who has been imprisoned for poaching;
he has won his Victoria Cross, and he is admired henceforth. You inflict
a punishment which confers honour on the culprit in the eyes of the only
persons for whose opinion he cares.
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