IX. LICENSE TO SELL GAME. Justices may hold a special session as often as they think fit, for the purpose of granting annual licenses to deal in game; and the majority of justices assembled may grant to any person, being a householder or a keeper of a shop or stall within their division, and not being an innkeeper or victualler, or licensed to sell beer by retail, nor being the owner, guard, or driver of any mail-coach, or other public conveyance, nor being a carrier or higgler, nor in the employmant of any of the above-named persons, a license to buy game of any person who may lawfully sell it, and to sell the same at any house, shop, or stall; every licensed person to put outside his house, shop, or stall, a board, with his Christian and surname, and the words "Licensed to deal in Game" thereon, 2 & 3 W. 4, c. 32; 2 & 3 V. c. 35. Certificated persons may sell game to licensed dealers; except that gamekeepers paying a less duty than £3 13s. 6d. may not do so, otherwise than on the account, and with the written authority, of their masters. Every licensed person annually to obtain a certificate on the payment of a duty of £2, to be in force for the same period as his license; such duty to be paid to the collectors of assessed taxes, as duties on game certificates are payable; the receipt for the duty to be free from stamp duty, and delivered on the payment of one shilling to the collector; the receipt to be exchanged for a ticket, as is done with game certificates: penalty for any licensed person dealing in game before he has obtained his certificate, £20. The collectors to make out lists of persons, their names and places of abode, who have obtained annual licenses and certificates, and to show the same to any person at seasonable hours, on the payment of one shilling: the duties on certificates, and the penalty of £20 for dealing without a certificate, are recoverable in the same manner as duties and penalties on game certificates. Partners carrying on business at one house or shop, need only take out one license. If any licensed person is convicted of an offence against the act, his license is void. An uncertificated person selling or offering game for sale, or a certificated person selling or offering game for sale to an unlicensed person, shall forfeit for every head of game not exceeding £2, with costs. Innkeepers, without a license, may sell game purchased of a licensed dealer, for consumption in their own houses. Every person, not being licensed, buying game of an unlicensed person, shall forfeit not exceeding £5 for every head of game, with costs. If any licensed dealer shall buy or obtain game from any person not authorized to sell it; or sell game, not having the aforesaid board affixed to his house; or fix such board to more than one house; or sell game at any other place than where the board is fixed; or if any unlicensed person shall, by fixing a board or exhi biting a certificate, pretend to be licensed; every such offer.der shall forfeit not exceeding £10, with costs. The servants of licensed dealers may sell game on the premises of their employer; or one licensed dealer may sell game on account of another licensed dealer. X. FORESTS, CHASES, WARRENS, PARKS, AND PUBLIC GARDENS. By the common law, the possessor of land has the exclusive right to all the wild animals found upon it, and he may pursue and kil them; and he may now, by the common law, which in so far continues unrestrained by any subsequent statute, support an action against any person (unless privileged by free warren) who shall take, kill, or chase them. The statutory qualifications to kill game, or, since they were abolished, the taking out of a certificate conveys no property not previously existing; neither does it exempt from any punishment to which a person is liable for trespassing on another's ground; it merely exempts him from the penalties to which he would be liable for killing game without having first taken out the annual license required by law.. Besides the absolute property which the owner of the land pos sesses in right of the soil, a person may also have a qualified property in wild animals by grant of privilege; that is, he may have the privilege of taking or killing them in exclusion of other persons, in virtue of a franchise to have a forest, chase, warren, or park. A forest is a royal domain for the preservation of the queen's beasts and fowls of forest, and is subject to its own laws, courts, and officers. Before the Charta de Foresta, the sovereign could make a forest of any extent over the lands of his subjects. It is the highest franchise relating to game; a free chase is the next in degree; a park the next; and the last a free warren. The number of forests is sixty-nine, of which the four principal are: New Forest on the Lea, Sherwood Forest on the Trent, Dean Forest on the Severn, and Windsor Forest on the Thames. A chase is of a middle nature, between a forest and a park; it differs from the former in that it may be held by a subject, and is governed by the common, not the forest law; and from the latter, in that it is not enclosed. A man may have a chase over another's ground, with privilege to keep royal game therein, protected even from the owner of the land. It is said there are thirteen chases in England. A park is an enclosed chase, extending only over a man's own land, privileged for wild beasts. There are only seven hundred and eighty parks; for it is not every field or common which a gentleman pleases to surround with a wall or paling, and to stock with a herd of deer, that is thereby made a legal park. To con stitute it three things are requisite: 1. A royal grant thereof. 2. Enclosure by pale, wall, or hedge. 3. Beasts of a park, such as the buck, doe, &c. And when all the deer are destroyed, it can no more be accounted a park; for a park consists of vert, venison, and inclosure; and if it is determined in any of them, it is a total disparking, Cro. Car. 59, 60. Free warren is a place privileged, by prescription or grant from the queen, for the keeping of beasts and fowls of the warren, which are hares and coneys, partridges, pheasants, and some add quails, woodcocks, and water-fowl, Terms de Ley, 589. Twenty years' undisturbed exercise of a claim of a warren or park will afford presumptive evidence of a right in the party so enjoying it. The owner of a warren may lawfully kill any dog which is used to hurt the warren. The rights of any forest, chase, or warren, are not affected by the Game Act. All the franchises of the description mentioned above, having their origin in the crown, may be destroyed by a reversion to the crown, or by surrender or forfeiture, in consequence of a breach of the trust upon which they were granted. An act of 1863 makes provision for the better maintenance and enjoyment in cities and towns of public gardens and grounds. By 26 V. c. 13, where, in a city or borough, any enclosed garden or ornamental ground has been set apart otherwise than by the revocable permission of the owner, in any public square, street, or other public place, for the use of the inhabitants, and the trustees have neglected to keep it in order, the Metropolitan Board of Works, if the same is under their jurisdiction, or other corporate authority, may take charge thereof, putting up a notice to that effect; and if, after due inquiry, the person entitled to any estate of freehold in the same cannot be found, and if requested by a majority of twothirds of the owners and occupiers of the houses in the vicinity, shall vest such grounds in a committee of not more than nine nor fewer than three of the rated inhabitants, to be chosen annually, in order that the same may be kept for the use of the same. By s. 3, expenses to be defrayed by the Metropolitan Board of Works, or if beyond its jurisdiction, by the corporate authorities under the Municipal Act. |