Hawke's Bay Herald. SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 1879.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5290, 25 January 1879, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Herald. SATURDAY, JANUARY 25, 1879.

The decision lately given in London, in a case in the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, cannot fail to have a beneficial effect in checking the arrogance and insolence of some of the English country squirearchy. The case was an appeal by some gentlemen of Somersetshire against a conviction for trespass and assault committed by them while hunting with the Vale of Taunton hounds in that county. The person assaulted was a young fellow named Summerhayes, whose father, a small farmer, being afflicted, left the management of the farm to his son. On the 2nd of last November young Summerhayes was at work in a field on the farm when the saw the appellants in the adjoining field and warned them from coming on his father's land. They, however, insisted on doing so, and on his attempting to restrain the first of the foxhunters, he was assaulted with a riding whip. The rest of the hunt then went into the field, and for this trespass, as well as the assault, they were summoned and convicted by the magistrates before whom the case was heard, who, however, inflicted only a small fine. The case was argued at considerable length on the appeal from the conviction. It was contended on the part of the appellants that the killing of foxes was considered beneficial to the public, and was therefore justifiable, and that the men in following the chase might go on anyone's land at times when there wore no crops to injure. That, of course, was only the foxhunter's view; the Court regarded the matter very differently. Lord Coleridge, who was one of tho Judges presiding, said that in common, sense, as everyone was aware,

tho object was not the killing of the fox but the enjoyment of the sport of hunting him, though, as incident to the sport, the fox was killed. Ho held that fox-hunting must be carried on like all other sports, insubordination to the general rights of mankind and tho ordinary laws of property, one of which is that no one is entitled td go 1 dn tlic land df another without his leave and against his will ; that a person occupying land had a right to resist the entry of a field of fox-huuters upon the land, and if they persist in going over the land, they arc trespassers; if the occupier resists them and they assault him, they a.ro without any legal justification ■ Mr Justice Mollor concurred, and the conviction was amrnied-. Young Sttminer'h^ye's may, be! Considered qiiito a noi'o in this matter 1 . For many years it had been assumed that in following the. hounds, horsemen had a right to go into a field, though if they committed damage they might be compelled to make compensation. It required no small courage to contest this supposed right, and to contest it singly, too, against a number of horsemen, who, as the sequel proved, wore not ashamed to have recourse to their whips, although they woro invading another man's property. Hei'e, in this colony, where 1 "Vvehave no examples of the overWhelniinginsdlonde which is but, idd often a characteristic 'oi the class of men who go out " a-hunt-iug,*' wo can scarcely realise the effect of the Court's decision. Such men will now knoAv that they are not at liberty to dp as they please and ride over any farmer's land at their own sweet will; and they will know, too, that even if through tho opposition oi farmers foxhunting should die out, that will not be considered so important a matter as the maintenance of the right of a man to hold his land against all invaders; «