The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 1888. MEN VERSUS DEER.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1750, 26 January 1888, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 1888. MEN VERSUS DEER.

Recent occurrences m the island of Lewis are bringing into sharp prominence the necessity for the assertion by the State of a right to insist that land shall no longer be regarded as the exclusive property of the individual landlord, m the sense that be is free to do with it whatsoever he pleases, but shall be dealt with as it was intended !by the Creator that it should be%dealt with, as the means of sustenance of is many human beings as it is Capable cf sustaining. That '* a man has a right to do what he likes with his own " i.*, stated as a general proposition, universally admitted, but the admission s accompanied by many reservation? . For example, a man may not suffer his children to grow up m ignorance, he may not starve, or illtreat his cattle, there are a hundred things m which his proprietary right may only be exercised within certain limits prescribed by public opinion, or by the law which a, the outcome of public opinion, as necessary ia the interests of society, of humanity, of social order, comfort, and decency ; and if the like interests demand that our law as affecting the rights of freeholders should be modified, no matter how sacred the right of property be regarded, then those mod fications must and will be made. A man may not use his land for the growth of noxious weeds lest those i weeds should spread to bis neighbor's fields, and the same law of justice which restricts him m this direction should restrict him from turning off from their homes and cultivations a struggling peasantry to make way for deer. And yet that is what has often been done m Scotland, and has recently been the cause of the trouble m the island of Lewis. There the crofters and cottars have been reduced to a state bordering go starvation, having been many of them evicted from their holdings, m order that the best pasture land m the island may be given up to the deer of the lordly proprietor. What woader that they haverebdled, have slaughtered deer to satisfy the cravings of hunger, i and bare threatened to : «UMf off the game to enable the preservation oi which they have been co ruthlessly left to statve! Whit wooder tb»t tbough they haye 1

thus broken the law juries refuse to } convict and to hand over those who are only exercising their natural rights to punishment as malefactors ! Surely the wrong lies, not with the unfortunate cottars, but with the selfish . landlords who have driven them to these dire straits. Undoubtedly v the cottars of Lewis will receive the sympathy of all free men the world over, and it is not unlikely that their case will be the means of bringing about a reform m English land laws, which will prevent the recurrence of the abuse of which they the victims. We commend to our readers the perusal of a ve^ry interesting article contributed to the "Pall Mall Gasette," by Mr J. S. Stuart Glennie, M.A., to which the above remarks are apropos, and which will be found m another column of this issue, ft is headed " The Reason of the Raids on the Deer."