_Punch_, we are afraid, was inclined, in those days at any rate, to resent any attempt to usurp his functions as a public ironist, even by those who were fighting on the same side as himself. Anyhow, he omitted to mention that the judge sentenced Rollins to one day's imprisonment. But later references to this famous judgment made it clear that _Punch_ recognized that the judge's irony was deliberate and animated by a sincere desire for reform, not by mere irresponsible "waggery." Against the Game Laws and their administration _Punch_ waged a continuous war. Squires were condemned for the damage done to land by game kept up for the profit of the landlord, hares being fed at the expense of the tenant farmer. John Bull worshipped rank and money, and amongst his idols were hares, pheasants and partridges, with his "bold peasantry" as their constant victims. [Sidenote: _The Model Labourer_] The Hon. Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley, M.P., who published a pamphlet in 1845 defending the drastic treatment of poachers, was very roughly handled for his calm assertion of the sacred rights of game; but perhaps the most effective comment on the inequalities of life on the land is to be found in the ironical portrait of "The Model Labourer" in the summer of 1848:-- He supports a large family upon the smallest wages. He works from twelve to fourteen hours a day. He rises early to dig in what he calls his garden. He prefers his fireside to the alehouse, and has only one pipe when he gets home, and then to bed. He attends church regularly, with a clean smock frock and face, on Sundays, and waits outside, when service is over, to pull his hair to his landlord, or, in his absence, pays the same reverence to the steward. Beer and he are perfect strangers, rarely meeting, except at Christmas or harvest time; and as for spirits, he only knows them, like meat, by name. He does not care for skittles. He never loses a day's work by attending political meetings. Newspapers do not make him discontented, for the simple reason that he cannot read. He believes strongly in the fact of his belonging to the "Finest Peasantry." He sends his children to school somehow, and gives them the best boots and education he can. He attributes all blights, bad seasons, failures, losses, accidents to the repeal of the Corn Laws. He won't look at a hare, and imagines, in his respect for rabbits, that Jack Sheppard was a poacher. He whitewashes his cottage once a year. He is punctual with his rent, and somehow, by some rare secret best known by his wages, he is never ill. He knows absolutely nothing beyond the affairs of his parish, and does not trouble himself greatly about them. If he has a vote, it is his landlord's, of course. He joins in the cry of "Protection," wondering what it means, and puts his X most innocently to any farmer's petition. He subscribes a penny a week to a Burial