Part 7

The way in which the rural population, great and small, were protected against one another, may be well illustrated by an extract from the third of James the First, chapter fourteen. This act was in force so lately as 1827, for it was only repealed by the seventh and eighth of George the Fourth, chapter twenty-seven. The fifth clause of this precious enactment made a man who had not forty pounds a year a “malefactor” if he shot a hare; while a neighbour who possessed a hundred a year, and caught him in the fact, became in one moment his judge and executioner. After reciting that if any person who had not real property producing forty pounds a year, or who had not two hundred pounds’ worth of goods and chattels, shall presume to shoot game, the clause goes on to say—“Then any person, having lands, tenements, and hereditaments, of the clear value of one hundred pounds a year, may take from the person or possession of such malefactor or malefactors, and to his own use for ever keep, such guns, bows, cross-bows, buckstalls, engine-traps, nets, ferrets, and coney dogs,” &c. This is hardly a comic leaf from the statute book. Indignation gives place to mirth on perusing it. Some portions of the game-laws still in force could be enumerated, equally unreasonable and summary.

Most of the statutes contain a comical set of rules of English Grammar, which are calculated to make the wig of Lindley Murray stiffen in his grave with horror; they run thus:—“Words importing the singular number shall include the plural number, and words importing the plural number shall include the singular number. Words importing the masculine gender shall include females. The word ‘person’ shall include a corporation, whether aggregate or sole. The word ‘lands’ shall include messuages, lands, tenements, and hereditaments of any tenure. The word ‘street’ shall extend to and include any road, square, court, alley, and thoroughfare, or public passage, within the limits of the special act. The expression ‘two justices’ shall be understood to mean two or more justices met and acting together.”

Thus ends our chapter of only a few of the mirth provocatives of the Statutes at Large.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Renumbered footnotes. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in 1^{st}).