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COUNTRY PRACTICE.

BY GELERT.

No. VI.-THE RIGHTS OF FOX-HUNTING.

As far as I have been able to discover, there are no records extant which chronicle the first establishment of the rights of fox-hunting. John Manwood wrote "A Treatise on the Lawes of the Forest," in 1615; William Nelson published a duodecimo volume on "The Law of England concerning the Game of Hunting," in 1727; and Giles Jacob produced an octavo, which underwent seven editions, "On the Game Law, and of Hawking, Hunting, Fishing, and Fowling," in 1740. But these quaint and elaborate worthies allude to the rights of hunting only in reference to common law, and omit to mention those conventional rights, so peculiarly English, which are the mainstay and support of fox-hunting. The omission, however, with them, was one of necessity; the rights, if recognised, had not been established by usage, and the forestal or common law was in those days the only law which regulated the practice of venery.

The rights of fox-hunting are, for the most part, conventional rights, dependent upon courtesy; and, though uncovered by the protection of common law, yet are they admitted and respected by every honourable man, and deemed as inviolable as the law of the Medes and Persians.

The sensible, straightforward, manly enactments which constitute the code of these rights are too plain to require an interpreter-too obvious to admit of miscomprehension.

Inasmuch, however, as they are "leges non scriptæ," oral laws handed down from one generation to another by mere word of mouth, it may not be a useless task-and confessedly it will be an agreeable oneto note down and embody in a distinct form the rights, duties, and obligations of the noble pastime as observed and practised throughout England during this the golden age of its existence.

There are, perhaps, no set of men more tenacious of their rights than masters of hounds; to hold their own, to preserve and transmit intact every privilege pertaining to their position and country, is a feeling so universal amongst them, that it would be difficult to point out an exception.

How important, then, does it become that every young master just entering upon a country-yea, that every one connected with houndsshould rightly understand those principles of courtesy upon which alone the pursuit of the noble science is based!

The man who repudiates home, friends, and countrymen, or departs from the faith and practice of his forefathers, incurs far less odium than he who violates the conventional laws of fox-hunting, and breaks down the barriers which honour has reared for its protection.

Happily the leaders of the chase, our masters of hounds, have seldom occasion to complain of this violation; happily they entertain for each other's rights that mutual respect which is characteristic of gen

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tlemen. Thus discord is banished from the field, and every one is reminded that by keeping faith and upholding his neighbour's rights he takes the best method of securing his own.

"A country" is a district occupied by an established pack of hounds, and defined by certain boundaries, within which the operations of that pack, excepting in full chase, are strictly confined. The district includes covers and land of every description, the property of a variety of owners, who together courteously concede to one pack the privilege of hunting it.

It sometimes happens, however, that the same covers are drawn by two packs (the result generally of arbitration consequent upon a question respecting the right of drawing such covers), in which case they are denominated "neutral. " Such are Tarwood, between the old Berkshire and the Heythrop; Bunny, between the Quorn and the Donington; and Lanacre Bridge, between the N. D. H. and the Tiverton.

It occasionally occurs also that a man, from private motives, may refuse to allow his covers to be drawn by the pack which hunts the country in which those covers are situated; in which refusal he is, of course, protected by common law; but he cannot invite a friend or a neighbouring pack to draw them, for, according to the rules of hunting, the acceptance of such invitation by another master of hounds would be regarded as a direct violation of all the proprieties of the field.

Again, the rights of a country, in a conventional respect, are even superior to territorial rights, to those of ownership; for if a master of hounds be an owner of covers in a neighbouring country, the privilege of drawing those covers or disturbing the foxes they contain no more pertains to himself than to the Pasha of Egypt: he is exactly in the position of a trustee, whose duty it is to hold and protect a property for the benefit of others, while he himself does not profit by the tenure. Some years ago a case of disputed right between two masters of foxhounds gave rise to a question which created the greatest interest throughout the hunting community of England. The case was simply this. A. B., a master of hounds, occupying a large extent of country, asked and obtained permission from C. D. to hunt an additional portion of country, which consisted principally of C. D.'s private property, and which had formerly been hunted by his family. The terms of the permission, however, were reduced to writing, and qualified by the following restriction, viz., "that if C. D. or his son should ever keep foxhounds, A. B. was to resign and give up that additional country.'

After some years both C. D. and his son died, but a daughter of C.D.'s married E. F., who, wishing to keep foxhounds, called upon A. B. to resign the said country; but A. B. acting upon the letter of the bond, refused to do so, consequently E. F. not only entered upon and hunted that country by force, but he purchased some very fine covers in the heart of A. B.'s original country, then expelled him and hunted those covers by force, that is to say by virtue of his common law title.

In the first place it was held that A. B. by disregarding the equity and fair construction of the agreement (for that agreement was intended to guard and preserve to the house of C. D. the rights of a country which had already been occupied by members of that house), had forfeited all claim to public sympathy, and more especially so, as A. B. already held a tract

of country, which at one time supported four packs of foxhounds: but, in the second place, the act of encroachment perpetrated by E. F. was universally condemned as an unheard of precedent, and subversive of every law of fox-hunting. A case in point that clearly establishes conventional rights to be superior to territorial.

In all the great hunting countries the boundaries of each pack are as well defined as those of private property. There are, however, a few countries in England, wherein moorlands and mountains prevail, which appear to extend interminably, and the limits of which are only guessed at by the draws of the nearest packs; but the attempt to establish any new pack, or the imagined encroachments of those already established, would at once settle the question, and the boundary would thenceforward be as accurately defined as that of the county itself.

In former days, when packs of foxhounds were few and far between, several packs established for themselves a kind of prescriptive right to their country, from having hunted it from time immemorial; and at that period the extent of country occupied by a single pack was such as, perhaps, to render it impossible for that pack to hunt it effectively in one season; therefore, to satisfy the cover owners, fox preservers, and others interested in the pursuit or destruction of the fox, it was found necessary to divide and sub-divide the country for the purpose of introducing new packs and meeting the demand just referred to. But that division devolved solely upon the cover owners and the master, for the time being, of the pack which claimed the prescriptive right of hunting the whole country, and, without his and their consent and approval, the fact of a stranger's drawing any portion of the country, however distant or however imperfectly hunted, would have been regarded far and wide as an unwarrantable intrusion, and altogether opposed to the prin ciples which govern the laws of hunting.

The Brocklesby country originally comprised the whole of the present "South Wold," a part of North Nottinghamshire and a part of the "Burton" countries; and the first Lord Yarborough, by planting covers that were at once sufficient and more convenient for his kennels, was enabled to contract the country to its present size. The occupation of it, as it then stood, must have required no small labour and attention, and the expense consequent upon the wear and tear of horseflesh and hounds travelling to and fro from their various kennels must have been enormous. But if, in the face of these difficulties, his lordship had chosen to hold and to hunt the entire country, no one would have been found to question his right to do so, for that right was regarded throughout his country as inalienable from the noble master and his successors, as long as he or they continued at the head of the Brocklesby hounds.

Again, the old Berkeley country, which at one time extended "from Barnett to Bath," is now occupied by many distinguished packs of foxhounds; but not a cover of it was ever resigned without the full and unqualified consent of the master and chief cover-owners.

A master of hounds, however, is not at liberty to sever his country or abandon a portion of it, in perpetuum, from motives of private convenience or expediency; the concurrence of a majority of the cover-owners is indispensable to make a conveyance of, and to render the severance of any portion secure, in order to establish it either as a separate and indepen

dent country, or for the purpose of annexing it permanently to another hunt. He may, indeed, cease to draw a district in his country distasteful to himself, perhaps on account of its distance, ungenial soil, rough character, or from any other private objection; or, according to circumstances, he may accommodate a neighbour with the use of it during the term of his mastership; but he can in no wise, by his own act or neglect, alienate or dispose of any portion of his country to the possible detriment of his successor, who, it may so happen, not only does not entertain the objections of his predecessor, but who actually regards that very district as the finest portion of his country.

It must never be forgotten that a master of fox-hounds holds his country in trust for the members of the hunt, and cannot, by negligence, convenience, or fraud, dispose of or abandon that country without the formal consent of the said members. Nor can a neighbouring master of fox-hounds gain a title to a country obtained" by surrender," without also showing a common law title, by showing the consent of the proprietors at the time he took possession.

Captain D. hunted a large extent of country in the north of England, and finding it extremely inconvenient to draw certain covers at a long distance from his kennels, he proposed to resign them to a neighbouring master of hounds, Sir E. L., on condition that the latter would restore them to the successor of the former, if at any future time he should be called upon to do so. The condition being accepted, a bond was signed to that effect, and the covers were accordingly handed over for Sir E. L.'s use. After a few seasons Captain D. gave up the country, and his successor, who brought a larger force into the field, called upon Sir E. L. to restore those covers, which he at once consented to do. The owner of the covers, however, having found the advantage of hunting with a pack of hounds easier of access, and whose operations were more contiguous to his own home, refused restoration, and requested Sir E. L. to continue his occupation of those covers; but to the honour of the man and fox-hunting be it said, that he scouted the idea of holding covers to which, conventionally, he had no right. The owner having gone thus far, then refused admission to the first occupier, and the consequence was that the country remained for many years unhunted by any pack of hounds.

The privilege of following hounds when in chase has been conceded to foxhunters, almost universally, by proprietors as well as occupiers of land, provided no wanton damage were done in the pursuit; but, with regard to the legality of following hounds, under any circumstances, there seems to have been a contrariety of opinion.

Mr. Deacon says" With respect to the right of a landowner to prevent fox-hunters from coming on his land, it has been decided in one case that a person might justify a trespass in following a fox with hounds over the grounds of another, if he did no more damage than was necessary to kill the fox, on the principle that a fox is a noxious animal, injurious to the commonwealth, and that it is for the public good to destroy a creature of this description. But this judgment has been impeached by Lord Ellenborough in subsequent decisions, and more particularly in the case of the Earl of Essex v. Capel, in which he held that if the defendant pursued the fox merely for the pleasure of the chace, and not for the sole purpose of killing and

destroying it as a noxious animal-in short, if the good of the public was not bond fide his governing motive-that he was liable to an action of trespass for following the hounds in pursuit of it over the plaintiff's lands.

The judgment of this great lawyer, of whom it might be said, by the bye, "ne sutor ultra crepidam," might have been a serious bar to the pastime; but happily this nation is a nation of hunters, and few and far between have been the instances wherein recourse has been had to legal proceedings for the purpose of prosecuting the fox-hunter.

Within the last twenty years, however, an act has been passed which affords full protection in such cases. It runs thus : "Provided always, and be it enacted, that the aforesaid provisions against trespassers and persons found on any land shall not extend to any person hunting or coursing upon any lands with hounds or greyhounds, and being in fresh pursuit of any deer, hare, or fox, already started upon any other land." -1 and 2 W. 4, cap. 32, sec. 35.

The authority of common law is here, then, unequivocally given to the pursuit of the fox over any lands, provided he has been already found upon any other lands; and so far the conventional law of the fox-hunter is confirmed and protected by a power less disputable and more effective than the mere usages to which he has been accustomed to bow.

The right of stopping earths is the next subject that claims our attention. It would never occur to the wildest fox-hunter that he would be justified in stopping the earths or drains of his neighbour under any circumstances, without permission; but there is another plan equally effective towards the furtherance of sport, the adoption of which may fairly be made a subject of discussion as to whether it is or is not in accordance with the fair practice of fox-hunting. We allude to the plan of sending on a whip to the earths of a neighbouring hunt to prevent the fox from entering. A good authority on all such matters says that it may be justified, provided the man be not dispatched on such errand until the fox is fairly afoot; for, under those circumstances, the pursuer has a right to assume that the fox is pointing for his neighbour's earth, and may take such means for keeping him above ground. But he may not station a man there, as a fixture, while he proceeds to draw for his game which as yet is unkennelled.

The distinction is certainly a reasonable one. The former proceeding is justified, we conclude, upon the plea that the war having commenced, any stratagem may be resorted to for keeping the enemy above ground; whereas the latter is condemned, because the plot appears too prospective and too premeditated against an enemy that at present has not been found.

It not unfrequently happens that a set of deep earths may be situated in one country, and the nearest covers to them in another; so that it is of great consequence that this point of difference should be clearly understood. The act of stationing a man upon a neighbour's earths was the causa belli between Mr. Langford and a large body of influential sportsmen. Several foxes had been bred, it was stated, in or near the said earths, which were not in Mr. Langford's country. There was, however, a small cover, within a mile of the earths, which was in his country, and in which he usually found. Prior, however, to drawing, he was in the habit of despatching a man to the earths, who frequently