Miscellany.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume V, Issue 440, 8 October 1880, Page 3

Miscellany.

TIIK GLIOUND GAME BILL

Everyone (says Figaro) will remember ■the chain of logical .reasoning by which it was clearly shown how the saving of a halfpenny wrarth of tar resulted in the loss of a mighty ship. There is a similar instance, too, in winch disaster of the gravest description ia traced to the loss of a single nail from a horse's shoe. We are reminded of theso cases nor a little by the arguments of: the aggrieved opponents of the Ground Qanio Bill, who show, at all events to their own satisfaction, that if fanners once possess tho legal right to kill the rabbits and hares on their own estates the ruin of tho Empire will inevitably ensue. In a few years, say these Tory Jeremiahs, ground game will be extinct, and without hares there will, obviously, be no keeping of harriers, coursing, too, will cease, as a matter of course, as a wag would say; and though our Conservative friends do not state as much, jugged hare must become a luxury of the past. The destruction of the rabbits, they continue, must result in the extinction of foxes ; and no foxes means no M.F.H .'s nor pack of foxhounds ! Next, we. are told, coverside meetings will cease, hunters will be no longer bred, farmers will find no market for their oats and hay, and the squires and in fact all rich Englishmen fond of eport, will leave the country era masse; next, the fanners, having no benevolent landlords left to appeal to, will also be forced to emigrate. Denuded of its backbone, the land will languish, the race will deteriorate, trade will decline, and laborcapital having left our shores—-will also quit tho island. Thus in a comparatively short period, about 1890 probably, the ruin of old England will be complete, and in the course of another decade London will be ready for the visit of the New Zealander tourist with artistic tastes, with whose presence Lord Macauley, in an evil hour, burdened current literature. Clearly then, according to theses Tory prophets of evil, tho conies, though a feeble folk, are intimately associated with the greatness of our country. Lot Sir William Harcourt pau3o, then ere he preserves with his Bill for precipitating the ruin of the Empire, and remember that what may be merely "game "(ground game in fact) for his friends say—for the nation.