One especially barbaric cruelty against the working-class is embodied in the Game Laws, which are more stringent than in any other country, while the game is plentiful beyond all conception.  The English peasant who, according to the old English custom and tradition, sees in poaching only a natural and noble expression of courage and daring, is stimulated still further by the contrast between his own poverty and the car tel est notre plaisir of the lord, who preserves thousands of hares and game birds for his private enjoyment.  The labourer lays snares, or shoots here and there a piece of game.  It does not injure the landlord as a matter of fact, for he has a vast superfluity, and it brings the poacher a meal for himself and his starving family.  But if he is caught he goes to jail, and for a second offence receives at the least seven years’ transportation.  From the severity of these laws arise the frequent bloody conflicts with the gamekeepers, which lead to a number of murders every year Hence the post of gamekeeper is not only dangerous, but of ill-repute and despised.  Last year, in two cases, gamekeepers shot themselves rather than continue their work.  Such is the moderate price at which the landed aristocracy purchases the noble sport of shooting; but what does it matter to the lords of the soil?  Whether one or two more or less of the “surplus” live or die matters nothing, and even if in consequence of the Game Laws half the surplus population could be put out of the way, it would be all the better for the other half—­according to the philanthropy of the English landlords.

Although the conditions of life in the country, the isolated dwellings, the stability of the surroundings and occupations, and consequently of the thoughts, are decidedly unfavourable to all development, yet poverty and want bear their fruits even here.  The manufacturing and mining proletariat emerged early from the first stage of resistance to our social order, the direct rebellion of the individual by the perpetration of crime; but the peasants are still in this stage at the present time.  Their favourite method of social warfare is incendiarism.  In the winter which followed the Revolution of July, in 1830-31, these incendiarisms first became general.  Disturbances had taken place, and the whole region of Sussex and the adjacent counties has been brought into a state of excitement in October, in consequence of an increase of the coastguard (which made smuggling much more difficult and “ruined the coast”—­in the words of a farmer), changes in the Poor Law, low wages, and the introduction of machinery.  In the winter the farmers’ hay and corn-stacks were burnt in the fields, and the very barns and stables under their windows.  Nearly every night a couple of such fires blazed up, and spread terror among the farmers and landlords.  The offenders were rarely discovered, and the workers attributed the incendiarism to a mythical person whom they named “Swing.”