Some squeamish people may object to our last proposal as severe. We do not think it so. The original nature of the offence has become entirely changed; for it must be allowed on all hands, that habitual breach of the laws is a very different thing from a casual effraction. It would be cruelty to transport an urchin for the first handkerchief he has stolen; but after his fourth offence, that punishment becomes an actual mercy. Nor should the moral effect produced by the residence of a determined poacher in any neighbourhood be overlooked. A poacher can rarely carry on his illicit trade without assistance: he entices boys by offering them a share in his gains, introduces them to the beer and the gin shop, and thus they are corrupted for life. It is sheer nonsense to say that poaching does not lead to other crimes. It leads in the first instance to idleness, which we know to be the parent of all crime; and it rapidly wears away all finer sense of the distinction between _meum_ and _tuum_. From poacher the transition to smuggler is rapid and easy, and your smuggler is usually a desperado. With all deference to Mr Welford, his conclusion, that poaching should be prevented by the entire extermination of game, is a most pitiable instance of calm imperturbable imbecility. He might just as well say that the only means of preventing theft is the total destruction of property, and the true remedy for murder the annihilation of the human race. We agree also with the committee, that some distinction must be made between cases of simple poaching, and those which are perpetrated by armed and daring gangs. To these banditti almost every instance of assault and murder connected with poaching is traceable, and the sooner such fellows are shipped off to hunt kangaroos in Australia the better. But we think that such penalties as we have indicated above, would in most cases act as a practical detention from this offence, and would certainly remove all ground for complaint against the unnecessary severity of the law.