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 2007. 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 501. value shall be run, upon penalty of 200l. to be paid by the owner of each horse running, and 100%. 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 101. 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.

§ 56. 10 Ann. c.26. § 109. 8 Geo. I. c.2. § 36, 37. 9 Geo. I. c.19. § 4, 5.

10 & 11 W. III. c. 17. 9 Ann. c.6. 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 reSee 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 "clear yearly value" will not be satisfied, if the rent of the land is reduced below the 1007. 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.

prosecutions may be carried on at the assizes. And, lastly, by statute 28 Geo. II. c. 12. no person, however qualified to kill, may make merchandize of this valuable privilege, by selling or exposing to sale any game, on pain of like forfeiture as if he had no qualification. (19)

(19) The 58 G. 3. c.75. has imposed a penalty of 51. on the buying of game, a regulation almost indispensable as a part of the present system of game laws; but the system itself has been repeatedly before the legislature within a few years, and though difficulties have occurred, which have caused the subject to be as often thrown aside, yet it seems certain that some fundamental change will take place in it ere long, and, therefore, I think it unnecessary to give an account of the various decisions which are reported on the present state of these laws.

CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH.

OF HOMICIDE.

IN the ten preceding chapters we have considered, first, such crimes and misdemesnors as are more immediately injurious to God, and his holy religion; secondly, such as violate or transgress the law of nations; thirdly, such as more especially affect the king, the father and representative of his people; fourthly, such as more directly infringe the rights of the public or commonwealth, taken in its collective capacity; and are now, lastly, to take into consideration those which in a more peculiar manner affect and injure individuals or private subjects.

WERE these injuries indeed confined to individuals only, and did they affect none but their immediate objects, they would fall absolutely under the notion of private wrongs; for which a satisfaction would be due only to the party injured : the manner of obtaining which was the subject of our inquiries in the preceding volume. But the wrongs, which we are now to treat of, are of a much more extensive consequence; 1. Because it is impossible they can be committed without a violation of the laws of nature; of the moral as well as political rules of right: 2. Because they include in them almost always a breach of the public peace: 3. Because by their example and evil tendency they threaten and endanger the subversion of all civil society. Upon these accounts it is, [177] that, besides the private satisfaction due and given in many cases to the individual, by action for the private wrong, the government also calls upon the offender to submit to public punishment for the public crime. And the prosecution of these offences is always at the suit and in the name of the