"
"Make haste, then, and see the last of these doomed institutions"
observed Mr. Quirk, with dark significance, as he looked up from his
steak and onions. "I tell you deer-forests are doomed; grouse-moors are
doomed; salmon-rivers are doomed. They are a survival of feudal rights
and privileges which the new democracy--the new ruling power--will make
short work of. The time has gone by for all these absurd restrictions
and reservations! There is no defence for them; there never was; they
were conceived in an iniquity of logic which modern common-sense will no
longer suffer. _Bona vacantia_ can't belong to anybody--therefore
they belong to the king; that's a pretty piece of reasoning, isn't it?
And if the crofter or the laborer says, '_Bona vacantia_ can't
belong to anybody--therefore they belong to me'--isn't the reasoning as
good? But it is not merely game-laws that must be abolished, it is game
itself."
"If you abolish the one, you'll soon get rid of the other," Maurice
Mangan said, with a kind of half-contemptuous indifference; he was
examining this person in a curious way, as he might have looked through
the wires of a cage in the Zoological Gardens.
Pages:
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69