and expose himself to indictment for receiving stolen goods, when he might supply his customers at fair prices by dealing with the lawful proprietor of game? Opinion is of more power than law. Such conduct would soon become infamous; and every respectable tradesman would be shamed out of it. The consumer himself would rather buy his game of a poulterer at an increase of price, than pick it up clandestinely, and at a great risk, though a somewhat smaller price, from porters and booth-keepers. Give them a chance of getting it fairly, and they will not get it unfairly. At present, no one has the slightest shame at violating a law which everybody feels to be absurd and unjust,

Poultry-houses are sometimes robbed ;—but stolen poultry is rarely offered to sale;-at least, nobody pretends that the shops of poulterers and the tables of monied gentlemen are supplied by these means. Out of one hundred geese that are consumed at Michaelmas, ninetynine come in to the jaws of the consumer by honest means; and yet, if it had pleased the country gentlemen to have Goose Laws as well as Game Laws;-if goosekeepers had been appointed, and the sale and purchase of this savoury bird prohibited, the same enjoyments would have been procured by the crimes and convictions of the poor; and the periodical gluttony of Michaelmas have been rendered as guilty and criminal, as it is indigestible and unwholesome. Upon this subject we shall quote a passage from the very sensible and spirited Letters before us :

"In favourable situations, game would be reared and preserved for the express purpose of regularly supplying the market in fair and open competition; which would so reduce its price, that I see no reason why a partridge should be dearer than a rabbit, or a hare and pheasant than a duck or goose. This is about the proportion of price which the animals bear to each other in France, where game can be legally sold, and is regularly brought to market; and where, by the way, game is as plentiful as in any cultivated country in Europe. The price so reduced would never be enough to compensate the risk and penalties of the unlawful poacher, who must therefore be driven out of the market. Doubtless the great poulterers of London and the commercial towns, who are the principal instigators of poaching, would cease to have any temptation to continue so, as they could fairly and lawfully procure game for their customers, at a cheaper rate from the regular breeders. They would, as they now do for rabbits and wild-fowl, contract with persons to rear and preserve them for the regular supply of their shops, which would be a much more commodious and satisfactory, and less hazardous way for them, than the irregular and dishonest and corrupting methods now pursued. It is not saying very much in favour of human nature, to assert that men in respectable stations of society had rather procure the same ends by honest than dishonest means. Thus would all the temptations to offend against the Game Laws, arising from the change of Society, together with the long chain of moral and political mischiefs, at once disappear.

"But then, in order to secure a sufficient breed of game for the supply of the market, in fair and open competition, it will be necessary to authorize a certain number of persons, likely to breed game for sale, to take and dispose of it when reared at their expense. For this purpose, I would suggest the propriety of permitting by law, occupiers of land to take and kill game, for sale or otherwise, on their own occupations only, unless (if tenants) they are specially prohibited by agreement with their landlord; reserving the game and the power of taking it to himself (as is now frequently done in leases). This permission should not, of course, operate during the current leases, unless by agreement. With this precaution, nothing could be fairer than such an enactment; for it is certainly at the expense of the Occupier that the game is raised and maintained; and unless he receive an equivalent for it, either by abatement of rent upon agreement, or by permission to take and dispose of it, he is certainly an injured man ; whereas it is perfectly just that the owner of the land should have the option either to increase his rent by leaving the disposal of his game to his tenant, or vice versa. Game would be held to be (as in fact it is) an outgoing from the land, like tithe and other burdens, and therefore to be considered in a bargain; and land would either be let game-free, or a special reservation of it made by agreement.

"Moreover, since the breed of game must always depend upon the occupier of the land, who may, and frequently does, destroy every head of it, or prevent its coming to maturity, unless it is considered in his rent; the licence for which I am now contending, by affording an inducement to preserve the breed in particular spots, would evidently have a considerable effect in increasing the stock of game in other parts, and in the country at large. There would be introduced a general system of protection, depending upon individual interest, instead of a general system of destruction. I have, therefore, very little doubt that the provision here recommended would, upon the whole, add facilities to the amusements of the sportsman, rather than subtract from them. A sportsman without land might also hire from the occupier of a large tract of land the privilege of shooting over it, which would answer to the latter as well as sending his game to the market. In short, he might in various ways get a fair return, to which he is well entitled for the expense and trouble incurred in rearing and preserving that particular species of stock upon his land." (Pp. 337-339.)

There are sometimes 400 or 500 head of game killed in great manors on a single day. We think it highly probable the greater part of this harvest (if the Game Laws were altered) would go to the poulterer, to purchase poultry or fish for the ensuing London season. Nobody is so poor and so distressed as men of very large fortunes, who are fond of making an unwise display to the world; and if they had recourse to these means of supplying game, it is impossible to suppose that the occupation of the poacher could be continued.—The smuggler can compete with the spirit-merchant, on account of the

great duty imposed by the revenue; but where there is no duty to be saved, the mere thief-the man who brings the article to market with a halter round his neck-the man of whom it is disreputable and penal to buy, who hazards life, liberty, and property to procure the articles which he sells; such an adventurer can never be long the rival of him who honestly and fairly produces the articles in which he deals.Fines, imprisonments, concealment, loss of character, are great deductions from the profits of any trade to which they attach, and great discouragements to its pursuit.

It is not the custom at present for gentlemen to sell their game; but the custom would soon begin, and public opinion soon change. It is not unusual for men of fortune to contract with their gardeners to supply their own table, and to send the residue to market, or to sell their venison; and the same thing might be done with the manor. If game could be bought, it would not be sent in presents :-barn-door fowls are never so sent, precisely for this reason.

The price of game would, under the system of laws of which we are speaking, be further lowered by the introduction of foreign game, the sale of which, at present prohibited, would tend very much to the preservation of English game by underselling the poacher. It would not be just, if it were possible, to confine any of the valuable productions of nature to the use of one class of men, and to prevent them from becoming the subject of barter, when the proprietor wished so to exchange them. It would be just as reasonable that the consumption of salmon should be confined to the proprietors of that sort of fishery -that the use of char should be limited to the inhabitants of the lakes —that maritime Englishmen should alone eat oysters and lobsters, as that every other class of the community than landowners should be prohibited from the acquisition of game.

It will be necessary, whenever the Game Laws are revised, that some of the worst punishments now inflicted for an infringement of these laws should be repealed.-To transport a man for seven years on account of partridges, and to harass a poor wretched peasant in the Crown Office, are very preposterous punishments for such offences. Humanity revolts against them-they are grossly tyrannical-and it is disgraceful that they should be suffered to remain on our statute books. But the most singular of all abuses, is the new class of punishments which the Squirarchy have themselves enacted against depredations on game. The law says, that an unqualified man who kills a pheasant shall pay five pounds; but the squire says he shall be shot; and accordingly he places a spring-gun in the path of the poacher, and does all he can to take away his life. The more humane and mitigated squire mangles him with traps; and the supra-fine country gentleman only detains him in machines, which prevent his escape, but do not lacerate their captive. Of the gross illegality of such proceedings, there can be no reasonable doubt. Their immorality and cruelty are equally clear. If they are not put down by some declaratory law, it will be absolutely necessary that the Judges, in their invaluable circuits of oyer and terminer, should leave two or

three of his Majesty's squires to a fate too vulgar and indelicate to be alluded to in this Journal.

Men have certainly a clear right to defend their property; but then it must be by such means as the law allows :-their houses by pistols, their fields by actions for trespass, their game by information. There is an end of law, if every man is to measure out his punishment for his own wrong. Nor are we able to distinguish between the guilt of two persons, the one of whom deliberately shoots a man whom he sees in his fields-the other of whom purposely places such instruments as he knows will shoot trespassers upon his fields: better that it should be lawful to kill a trespasser face to face, than to place engines which will kill him. The trespasser may be a child-a woman-a son, or friend: The spring-gun cannot accommodate itself to circumstances, the squire or the gamekeeper may.

These, then, are our opinions respecting the alterations in the Game Laws, which, as they now stand, are perhaps the only system which could possibly render the possession of game so very insecure as it now is. We would give to every man an absolute property in the game upon his land, with full power to kill-to permit others to kill--and to sell; we would punish any violation of that property by summary conviction, and pecuniary penalties-rising in value according to the number of offences. This would of course abolish all qualifications; and we sincerely believe it would lessen the profits of selling game illegally, so as very materially to lessen the number of poachers. It would make game, as an article of food, accessible to all classes, without infringing the laws. It would limit the amusements of country gentlemen within the boundaries of justice-and would enable the magistrate cheerfully and conscientiously to execute laws, of the moderation and justice of which he must be thoroughly convinced. To this conclusion, too, we have no doubt we shall come at the last. After many years of scutigeral folly-loaded prisons--nightly battlespoachers tempted-and families ruined-these principles will finally prevail, and make law once more coincident with reason and justice.

BOW DICH'S ASHANTEE:

Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, with a Statistical Account of that Kingdom, and Geographical Notices of other Parts of the Interior of Africa. By T. EDWARD BOWDICH, Esq., Conductor. London: Murray. 1819.

CA 'APE COAST CASTLE, or Cape Corso, is a factory of Africa, ot the Gold Coast. The Portuguese settled here in 1610, and buik the citadel; from which, in a few years afterwards, they were dislodged by the Dutch. In 1661, it was demolished by the English under Admiral Holmes; and by the treaty of Breda, it was made over to our Government. The latitude of Cape Coast Castle is 56' north; the

longitude 18 51' west. The capital of the kingdom of Ashantee is Coomassie, the latitude of which is about 6° 30′ 20′′ north, and the longitude 2o 6' 3c" west. The mission quitted Cape Coast Castle on the 22nd of April, and arrived at Coomassie about the 16th of Mayhalting two or three days on the route, and walking the whole distance, or carried by hammock-bearers at a foot-pace. The distance between the fort and the capital is not more than 150 miles, or about as far as from Durham to Edinburgh; and yet the kingdom of Ashantee was, before the mission of Mr. Bowdich, almost as much unknown to us as if it had been situated in some other planet. The country which surrounds Cape Coast Castle belongs to the Fantees; and, about the year 1807, an Ashantee army reached the coast for the first time. They invaded Fantee again in 1811, and, for the third time, in 1816. To put a stop to the horrible cruelties committed by the stronger on the weaker nation; to secure their own safety, endangered by the Ashantees; and to enlarge our knowledge of Africa-the Government of Cape Coast Castle persuaded the African Committee to send a deputation to the kingdom of Ashantee: and of this embassy, the publication now before us is the narrative. The embassy walked through a beautiful country, laid waste by the recent wars, and arrived in the time we have mentioned, and without meeting with any remarkable accident, at Coomassie the capital. The account of their first reception there we shall lay before our readers.

"We entered Coomassie at two o'clock, passing under a fetish, or sacrifice of a dead sheep, wrapped up in red silk, and suspended between two lofty poles. Upwards of 5000 people, the greater part warriors, met us with awful bursts of martial music, discordant only in its mixture; for horns, drums, rattles, and gong-gongs, were all exerted with a zeal bordering on frenzy, to subdue us by the first impression. The smoke which encircled us from the incessant discharges of musketry, confined our glimpses to the foreground; and we were halted whilst the captains performed their Pyrrhic dance, in the centre of a circle formed by their warriors; where a confusion of flags, English, Dutch, and Danish, were waved and flourished in all directions; the bearers plunging and springing from side to side, with a passion of enthusiasm only equalled by the captains, who followed them, discharging their shining blunderbusses so close, that the flags now and then were in a blaze; and emerging from the smoke with all the gesture and distortion of maniacs. Their followers kept up the firing around us in the rear. The dress of the captains was a war cap, with gilded rams' horns projecting in front, the sides extending beyond all proportion by immense plumes of eagles' feathers, and fastened under the chin with bands of cowries. Their vest was of red cloth, covered with fetishes and saphies in gold and silver; and embroidered cases of almost every colour, which flapped against their bodies as they moved, intermixed with small brass bells, the horns and tails of animals, shells, and knives; long leopards' tails hung down their backs, over a small bow, covered with fetishes. They wore loose