or within fourteen days after it,
shall have been employed in the election as counsel, agent, attorney,
poll-clerk, flagman, or in any other capacity, and shall have received
in consideration of such employment any fee, place, or office, shall
be incapable of voting at such elections; and that a penalty of L10 for
each offence shall be inflicted upon every candidate, who, after the
test of the writ, or if parliament be sitting, after the seat has become
vacant, shall directly or indirectly give to any voter or inhabitant
any cockade, riband, or any other mark of distinction. On the whole,
therefore, a great step was taken this session towards the purification
of elections; a branding mark, at least, was set upon shameless
corruption.

THE GAME-LAWS.

During this session Lord Wharncliffe introduced a bill into the lords
for altering the system of the game-laws. The provisions of this
bill were threefold: first, it removed the absurd and contradictory
qualifications of the old law, and substituted in their place the
qualification of property, by permitting every proprietor to kill game
on his own lands, whether great or small; secondly, it legalized the
sale of game, as one great means of diminishing the temptations for
poaching; and, thirdly, it mitigated the severity of the punishments
provided by the existing law for certain offences against the game acts.
This bill was allowed to be read a second time; but on the third
reading it was lost by a majority of one. It had, however, scarcely
been rejected when the Marquis of Salisbury introduced another, which
proposed to empower all persons qualified by law to kill game to take
out a licence, authorizing them to sell game to licensed dealers. This
bill was likewise allowed to pass a second reading; but it was lost on
a motion for the third reading by a majority of fifty-four to
thirty-eight. One great alteration, however, was effected by a bill
introduced by Lord Suffield, which abolished the practice of setting
spring-guns and other engines of destruction for the preservation
of game. This bill, which passed into a law, declared it to be a
misdemeanour in any person to set a spring-gun, man-trap, or other
engine calculated to kill, or inflict grievous injury, with the intent
that it should destroy life, or occasion bodily harm to any trespasser
or other person who might come into contact with it. An exception was
made in favour of gins and traps for the destructio