The supposed amount of destruction by game of cereal and other produce, has afforded a fine field for the more erudite of the game law opponents. Mr Gayford's celebrated calculation, that three hares eat as much as a full-grown sheep, is generally assumed as the infallible basis of their estimates, and the most astounding results are evolved from it.[8] Mr Charles Stevenson thinks the destruction cannot be less than two bushels per acre over the whole kingdom, representing a total of _two hundred thousand quarters_. "_If it be the case_," says Mr Chiene Shepherd, with a modest hesitation--"if it be the case, that throughout this empire the farmers, in general, suffer more loss from game than they pay in the form of poor's tax (_and I suppose it cannot be doubted that they do so_--that in most parts they suffer _more than double_ the amount of their poor-rates,) then it follows, of course, that there is more destruction from game than would make up the sum collected from poor-rates from the whole lands of the empire."[9] Double the amount of poor-rates paid by land may be taken roughly at some £9,000,000. But there are others who think even this too low an estimate, and throw into the scale (a million out or in is of no importance) the county rate, highway rate, and all the other direct burdens on land put together! Let us carry on the line of calculation a step further: if game animals _alone_ consume all this, and if we allow a fair proportion of voracity to the minor, but more numerous _feræ_--rats, mice, rooks, wood-pigeons, &c.--it is clear as daylight that it is a mere delusion to think that a single quarter of wheat can, by any possibility, escape the universal devastation. There is no lunatic so incurable as your rampant arithmetician; and the only delusion that could stand a comparison with the above would be the attempt to reason such men out of their absurdities.
But the actual waste of grain is not, it seems, the only way in which the public suffers. The annual cost to the community of prosecutions under the game acts is an enormous and annually increasing burden. This is proved, of course, by the same system of statistics run mad as that of which we have just given some specimens. The game convictions in the county of Bedford, it is discovered, were, in the year 1843, 36 per cent of the total _male_ summary convictions; and the lovers of the marvellous, who listen to such statements, are quietly left to infer, not only that this is usually the case in Bedfordshire, but that a similar state of things prevails throughout England and Scotland also. They are sagacious enough, however, never to refer to general results. They carefully avoid any mention of the fact, (which, however, any one may learn for himself, by referring to Mr Phillipps' tables,) that the average of the game convictions during the five years these tables include, was, for _all England_, not 36, but a fraction over 6 per cent of the whole. Now, let us see how the case stands in Scotland. We have observed that our northern orators always draw their illustrations from the south of the Tweed; and we have, therefore, looked with some curiosity into the records of our Scotch county courts, as affording some test of the real extent of the grievance in this part of the empire. Unfortunately these records are not preserved in a tabular form by all the counties; but we have been favoured with returns from five of the most important on the east coast, which we selected as being those in which the preservation of game is notoriously carried to the greatest extent. An abstract of these returns will be found below,[10] and will suffice to show how false, in regard to Scotland, is the assertion that game prosecutions are alarmingly numerous; while every one knows that the expense is borne, not by the public, but by the private party, except in very rare and aggravated cases. From these it appears that the whole number of game cases tried, or reported to the authorities, in these five counties, during the years 1846 and 1847, was one hundred and forty-four, being about 2.5 per cent of the whole. Fifeshire (which was selected to be shown up before Mr Bright's committee as an abyss of game-law abuses) had, in 1848, out of eight hundred and thirty offences, only _three_ under the game acts. As to the alleged progressive _increase_ of such cases, the subjoined table of the numbers for the five years preceding 1848[11] proves that, whether it be true or not as respects isolated districts of England, that the number of game-law trials is every year becoming a heavier burden on the public, it certainly is not true in four of the largest and most _game-keeping_ counties of Scotland.