three, however, no longer cast reflections on one another, and were an
assurance to this acute politician that his birds were safe. He
preserved game rigorously, and the deduction was the work of instinct
with him. To his mind the game-laws were the corner-stone of Law, and of
a man's right to hold his own; and so delicately did he think the country
poised, that an attack on them threatened the structure of justice. The
three conjoined Estates were therefore his head gamekeepers; their duty
was to back him against the poacher, if they would not see the country
tumble. As to his under-gamekeepers, he was their intimate and their
friend, saying, with none of the misanthropy which proclaims the virtues
of the faithful dog to the confusion of humankind, he liked their company
better than that of his equals, and learnt more from them. They also
listened deferentially to their instructor.

The conversation he delighted in most might have been going on in any
century since the Conquest. Grant him his not unreasonable argument upon
his property in game, he was a liberal landlord. No tenants were forced
to take his farms. He dragged none by the collar. He gave them liberty
to go to Australia, Canada, the Americas, if they liked. He asked in
return to have the liberty to shoot on his own grounds, and rear the
marks for his shot, treating the question of indemnification as a
gentleman should. Still there were grumbling tenants. He swarmed with
game, and, though he was liberal, his hares and his birds were immensely
destructive: computation could not fix the damage done by them. Probably
the farmers expected them not to eat. 'There are two parties to a
bargain,' said Everard, 'and one gets the worst of it. But if he was
never obliged to make it, where's his right to complain?' Men of sense
rarely obtain satisfactory answers: they are provoked to despise their
kind. But the poacher was another kind of vermin than the stupid tenant.
Everard did him the honour to hate him, and twice in a fray had he