The term “game” includes hares, pheasants, partridges, grouse, black-game, ptarmigan, and bustards. In addition to these there are a number of animals to which one or other of the game statutes extends protection. These are rabbits, deer, roe, woodcock, snipe, quail, landrails, and wild duck. Although there is no property in wild animals, it has been settled by the Courts that the right to pursue or take game is a private privilege. In England this privilege belongs to the occupier of the soil, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, and in Scotland to the owner. In the former country agreements reserving the game to the owner are almost universal. The occupier or the owner of the soil has the right to claim any game killed on his land; but such is the curious state of the law that the poacher who takes away what he kills is not guilty of theft. The Game Laws are held in abhorrence by the majority of people, chiefly for two reasons: first, on account of their injurious economic effects, and, second, because of the harsh punishments which they inflict for trivial offences. By their action large tracts of land have been rendered almost totally unproductive, cultivation has been abandoned and immense numbers of labourers thrown out of employment; the crops of farmers near preserves, although often on a different estate, have been injured or even destroyed; ill-feeling has been engendered between the authors and the victims of game preserving, and not infrequently the landless, workless labourer has been driven to break the law in order to procure food, thus landing himself in violence, or even murder. In addition to all this, the irrepressible sporting appetite of the people, sustained by a consciousness of having moral right on its side, leads to a reckless love of breaking laws which are unjust, unfair, and injurious. No believer in democratic government, no lover of order, can uphold statutes which demoralise those who live under them.[9] ADMINISTRATION OF THE GAME LAWS. But bad as are the Game Laws in essence, the manner in which they are administered makes them far worse and more hateful. It is notorious that a large number of Justices of the Peace are game preservers. The people who break the Game Laws almost all belong to one class, the people who sit in judgment on them almost all belong to another and hostile class. The effect of this arrangement is made very clear by the following questions and answers:--