the expences occasioned by the former : it being a kind of tacit confession, that the company engaged therein do, in general, exceed the bounds of their respective fortunes; and therefore they cast lots to determine upon whom the ruin shall at present fall, that the rest may be saved a little longer. But, taken in any light, it is an offence of the most alarming nature; tending by necessary consequence to promote public idleness, theft, and debauchery among those of a lower class; and, among persons of a superior rank, it hath frequently been attended with the sudden ruin and desolation of antient and opulent families, an abandoned prostitution of every principle of honour and virtue, and too often hath ended in self-murder. To restrain this pernicious vice, among the inferior sort of people, the statute 33 Hen. VIII. c.9. was made; which prohibits to all but gentlemen the games of tennis, tables, cards, dice, bowls, and other unlawful diversions there specified, unless in the time of christmas, under pecuniary pains and imprisonment. And the same law, and also the statute 30 Geo. II. c. 24. inflict pecuniary penalties, as well upon the master of any public house wherein servants are permitted to game, as upon the servants themselves who [172] are found to be gaming there. But this is not the principal

ground of modern complaint: it is the gaming in high life,
that demands the attention of the magistrate; a passion to
which every valuable consideration is made a sacrifice, and
which we seem to have inherited from our ancestors the an-
tient Germans; whom Tacitus describes to have been be-
witched with a spirit of play to a most exorbitant degree.
"They addict themselves," says he, "to dice (which is won-
"derful) when sober, and as a serious employment; with
"such a mad desire of winning or losing, that, when stript
"of every thing else, they will stake at last their liberty
"and their very selves. The loser goes into a voluntary
"slavery, and though younger and stronger than his antago-
"nist, suffers himself to be bound and sold. And this per-
severance in so bad a cause they call the point of honour :
ea est in re pravá pervicacia, ipsi fidem vocant." One would
almost be tempted to think Tacitus was describing a modern
d Logetting in the fields, slide thrift
or shove-groat, cloyish cayles, half-bowl,
and coyting.

66

e de mor. Germ. c.24.

Englishman. When men are thus intoxicated with so frantic a spirit, laws will be of little avail; because the same false sense of honour, that prompts a man to sacrifice himself, will deter him from appealing to the magistrate. Yet it is proper that laws should be, and be known publicly, that gentlemen may consider what penalties they wilfully incur, and what a confidence they repose in sharpers; who, if successful in play, are certain to be paid with honour, or if unsuccessful, have it in their power to be still greater gainers by informing. For by statute 16 Car. II. c.7. if any person by playing or betting shall lose more than 1007. at one time, he shall not be compellable to pay the same; and the winner shall forfeit treble the value, one moiety to the king, the other to the informer. The statute 9 Ann. c.14. enacts, that all bonds and other securities, given for money won at play, or money lent at the time to play withal, shall be utterly void (16); that all mortgages and incumbrances of lands, made upon the same consideration, shall be and enure to the use of the heir of the mortgagor; that, if any person at any time or sitting loses 10. at play, he may [within three months] sue the winner, and recover it back by action of debt at law; and in case the loser does not, any other person may sue the winner for treble the sum so lost; and the plaintiff may by bill in equity examine the defendant himself upon oath; and that in any of these suits no privilege of parliament shall be allowed. (17) The

(16) In Bowyer v. Bampton, 2 Strange, 1155. it was determined that where a promissory note so given had been indorsed for a valuable consideration to an innocent person, ignorant of the original transaction out of which it had arisen, he could maintain no action on it against the maker, though he might against the indorser. For that whatever were the hardship to the innocent individual, this was the only mode to prevent an evasion of the statute. The same determination prevailed under another statute with respect to securities given upon a usurious consideration, but the 58 G. 3. c. 95. has altered the law in that respect, enacting that no bill of exchange or promissory note, though given originally for a usurious consideration, shall be void in the hands of an indorsee for a valuable consideration, who had at the time no notice of the original taint.

(17) The statute gives the common informer a right to sue for the sum lost, and treble the value; the one moiety to his own use, and the other to the use of the poor of the parish, in which the offence was committed. It is stated, too generally, that the "plaintiff" is entitled to a discovery upon oath; for in a case not reported, of Holloway v. Cookson, Mich. 40 G.3., and in that of Orme v. Crockford, Easter, 5 G. 4. MS., the Court

statute farther enacts, that if any person by cheating at play shall win any money or valuable thing, or shall at any one time or sitting win more than 10%., he may be indicted thereupon, and shall forfeit five times the value to any person who will sue for it; and (in case of cheating) shall be deemed infamous, and suffer such corporal punishment as in case of wilful perjury. By several statutes of the reign of king George II., all private lotteries by tickets, cards, or dice, (and particularly the games of faro, basset, ace of hearts, hazard, passage, rolly polly, and all other games with dice, except back-gammon,) are prohibited under a penalty of 2001. for him that shall erect such lotteries, and 50l. a time for the players. Public lotteries, unless by authority of parliament, and all manner of ingenious devices, under the denomination of sales or otherwise, which in the end are equivalent to lotteries, were before prohibited by a great variety of statutes & under heavy pecuniary penalties. But particular descriptions will ever be lame and deficient, unless all games of mere chance are at once prohibited; the inventions of sharpers being swifter than the punishment of the law, which only hunts them from one device to another. The statute 13 Geo. II. c.19. to prevent the multiplicity of horse races, another fund of gaming, directs that no plates or matches under 50l. value shall be run, upon penalty of 2007. to be paid by the owner of each horse running, and 100l. by such as advertise the plate. By statute 18 Geo. II. c. 34. the statute 9 Ann. is farther enforced, and some deficiencies supplied; the forfeitures of that act may now be recovered in a court of equity; and, moreover, if any man be convicted upon information or indictment of winning or losing at play, or by betting at any one time 10%. or 20l. within twenty-four hours, he shall be fined five times the sum for the benefit of the poor of the parish. Thus careful has the legislature been to prevent this destructive vice; which may shew that our laws against gaming [174] are not so deficient, as ourselves and our magistrates in putting those laws in execution.

f 12 Geo. II. c. 28. 13 Geo. II. c. 19.

18 Geo. II. c. 34.

8 10 & 11W. III. c. 17. 9 Ann.c.6.

$56. 10 Ann. c.26. § 109. 8 Geo. I, c.2. § 36, 37. 9 Geo. I. c.19. § 4, 5. 6 Geo. II. c.35. § 29, 30.

of exchequer decided that the statute gave that benefit only to the party seeking to recover what he had lost, and not to the informer suing for the penalties.

9. LASTLY, there is another offence, constituted by a variety of acts of parliament; which are so numerous and so confused, and the crime itself of so questionable a nature, that I shall not detain the reader with many observations thereupon. And yet it is an offence which the sportsmen of England seem to think of the highest importance; and a matter, perhaps the only one, of general and national concern: associations having been formed all over the kingdom to prevent it's destructive progress. I mean the offence of destroying such beasts and fowls, as are ranked under the denomination of game; which, we may remember, was formerly observed ", (upon the old principles of the forest law,) to be a trespass and offence in all persons alike, who have not authority from the crown to kill game, (which is royal property,) by the grant of either a free warren, or at least a manor of their own. But the laws, called the game laws, have also inflicted additional punishments (chiefly pecuniary) on persons guilty of the general offence, unless they be people of such rank or fortune as is therein particularly specified. All persons therefore, of what property or distinction soever, that kill game out of their own territories, or even upon their own estates, without the king's licence expressed by the grant of a franchise, are guilty of the first original offence, of encroaching on the royal prerogative. And those indigent persons who do so, without having such rank or fortune as is generally called a qualification, are guilty not only of the original offence, but of the aggravations also, created by the statutes for preserving the game: which aggravations are so severely punished, and those punishments so implacably inflicted, that the offence against the king is seldom thought of, provided the miserable delinquent can make his peace with 'the lord of the manor. This offence, thus aggravated, I have ranked under the present head, because the only rational footing, upon which we can consider it as a crime, is, that in low and indigent persons it promotes idleness, and takes them away from their proper employments and callings; which is an offence against the public police and oeconomy [175] of the commonwealth.

THE statutes for preserving the game are many and various, and not a little obscure and intricate: it being re See Vol. II. pag. 417, &c.

marked', that in one statute only, 5 Ann. c. 14. there is false grammar in no fewer than six places, besides other mistakes; the occasion of which, or what denomination of persons were probably the penners of these statutes, I shall not at present inquire. It is in general sufficient to observe, that the qualifications for killing game, as they are usually called, or more properly the exemptions from the penalties inflicted by the statute law, are, 1. The having a freehold estate of 100l. per annum; there being fifty times the property required to enable a man to kill a partridge, as to vote for a knight of the shire: 2. A leasehold for ninety-nine years of 150l. per annum: 3. Being the son and heir apparent of an esquire (a very loose and vague description), or person of superior degree: 4. Being the owner, or keeper, of a forest, park, chase, or warren. (18) For unqualified persons transgressing these laws, by killing game, keeping engines for that purpose, or even having game in their custody, or for persons (however qualified) that kill game or have it in possession, at unseasonable times of the year, or unseasonable hours of the day or night, on Sundays or on Christmas day, there are various penalties assigned, corporal and pecuniary, by different statutes; on any of which, but only on one at a time, the justices may convict in a summary way, or (in most of them)

(18) The words of the statute 22 & 23 C.2. c. 25. are "lands and tenements, or some other estate of inheritance in his own or his wife's right, of the clear yearly value of 100l. per annum, or for a term of life, or lease or leases of 99 years, or for any longer term, of the clear yearly value of 150l." The estate, therefore, of 100l. per annum must be an estate of inheritance; a mere freehold will not suffice, nor is the freehold necessary; it may be a copyhold or equitable estate. The term 66 clear yearly value" will not be satisfied, if the rent of the land is reduced below the 100l. by the payment of the interest of a mortgage on it. A life estate must be of the annual value of 150l., which construction has been given to the statute on comparing it with former qualification laws, in which the policy has always been to increase the value where the interest is only for life. The exceptions of the statute are worded thus: "other than the son and heir-apparent of an esquire, or other person of higher degree." Within these words, neither an esquire, nor person of higher degree, are included; all persons down to knights and colonels, serjeants at law, and doctors in the three learned professions, are of higher degree than esquires. See Vol.I. p. 405., and the cases collected in Selwyn's Ni. Pri. 877, 6 Ed.