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I remain unconvinced by Michael Perelman's response to my comments.  
Michael says that although hunting could not support a significant  
population it could make the difference between 'success or failure'.  
This seems to imply an either/or choice between self-provisioning or  
working for wages, with hunting tipping the balance. But later he says  
that people (I am not sure which people) 'wanted enough self  
provisioning to make sure that wages could be low, but not so much as  
to offer an escape from wage labor', implying that the choice is not  
just either/or. Is it suggested that the game laws were part of a  
finely-adjusted calculation designed to leave country people just  
unable to survive by self-provisioning? I can't believe that either the  
rural population or the potential gains from hunting were sufficiently 
homogeneous to achieve that aim, or the upper classes smart enough to  
make the calculations. My impression is that most of the country poor  
were engaged in at least some wage work and had been for a long time,  
so complete self-provisioning was not a real issue. 
 
I am also unconvinced by his treatment of the damage allegedly done by  
organised hunting. He says that business people were undisturbed by  
losses to less well-off country people. That may well be, but it seems  
absurd to suggest that Ricardo (say) would have been undisturbed by  
significant losses in agricultural productivity. Why should business  
people care about the corn laws and not about reduced agricultural  
productivity? Both affect the supply, and hence price, of corn. 
 
I should say that my comments relate to eighteenth and nineteenth  
century England, not to the deer parks of the Scottish highlands, which 
are a different case. Michael's reply switches between the two. 
 
Tony Brewer 
 
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