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Greg Clark gave my book, The Invention of Capitalism, a good-natured, 
but dismissive review.  I expected a more substantive analysis from 
Greg.  Perhaps he thought that merely associating me with Karl Marx or 
Chico Marx would be enough for some people to write off my book. 
 
Greg offered a slightly more real critique, rebuking me for criticizing 
the classical political economists for not mentioning the Game Laws.  
Taken out of context, my position might seem rather silly.  After all, 
at first glance the Game Laws might seem to be an obscure concern, 
hardly worth any notice today.  At the time, however, the Game Laws were 
having a profound effect on society.   
 
The Game Laws prohibited the vast majority of farmers from disturbing 
animals that ate their grain.  For example, in the 1840s, game destroyed 
an estimated quarter of the crops of Buckinghamshire (Horn 1981, 179).  
Groups of wealthy hunters were permitted to chase their prey across 
farmers' fields on horseback.  One fox hunt trampled crops on a 28 mile 
run.  You can only imagine the immense destruction of crops. 
 
The Game Laws had a human dimension as well.  In Wiltshire alone, more 
than 1,300 persons were imprisoned under the Game Laws in the fifteen 
years after the battle at Waterloo in 1815, more than twice the number 
for the previous fifty years (Munsche 1980, 138).  Between 1820 and 
1827, nearly a quarter of those committed to prison were convicted of 
poaching (Shaw 1966, 155).  The number of convictions was undoubtedly 
understated because the Justices of the Peace who heard cases frequently 
neglected to record them (Hay 1975, 192). 
 
Poaching was taken so seriously that it was, on occasion, even equated 
with treason.  The British courts enforced these laws with shocking 
ferocity.  Several poachers were actually executed under the famous 
Black Acts (Thompson 1975, 68). 
 
The Game Laws also caught up innocent people.  Wealthy landowners 
installed lethal spring guns and man traps to protect their game from 
poachers.  Many of the victims of these instruments were children just 
playing outside. 
 
The strongest defense of the Game Laws was that they gave the idle 
gentry a reason to take interest in their lands.  Little account was 
taken of the immense suffering that they entailed or of the  
 
The Game Laws created far more damage than the Corn Laws, which agitated 
so many political economists of the time.  Why, then, did the classical 
political economists spill so much ink regarding the Corn Laws and let 
the Game Laws pass unnoticed?  For Clark, my questioning this lack of 
interest on the part of the classical political economists seemed 
frivolous, or worse, an indication that I was indulging in some sort of 
Roswellian conspiracy theory. 
 
In truth, no conspiracy was necessary.  While the Corn Laws seemed to 
threaten profits, the Game Laws augmented them.  By depriving poor 
people of a traditional food source and requiring them to purchase 
substitutes on the market, the Game Laws forced people into labor 
markets, holding down wages. 
 
Perhaps, I am being uncharitable in attributing class interests to the 
political economists.  In fact, I found a curious pattern among their 
writings.  While in their theoretical works they often praised the 
natural efficiencies of markets, in their letters and diaries and less 
theoretical works, they took a keen interest in finding ways to 
manipulate conditions in the countryside.  Sometimes, such interests 
even crept into their theoretical work, as in the case of the first 
edition of Ricardo, the great opponent of the Corn Laws, who worried 
that the price of food was too low in Ireland because Irish people could 
get by too easily without engaging in wage labor.  The offending passage 
was removed from the second edition. 
 
Over the years, I have followed Greg's writings although I do not always 
agree with his conclusions.  Generally, Greg stoutly defends markets as 
being beneficial.  I would expect him to find my book uncongenial.  
Rather than to claim that I have been wronged in some way, I believe 
that the best course is to leave the verdict up to other readers. 
 
References 
 
Hay, Douglas. 1975. "Poaching and the Game Laws on Cannock Chase." In 
Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh and Edward P. Thompson, eds. Albion's Fatal 
Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York: 
Pantheon Books): pp. 189-254. 
 
Horn, Pamela. 1981. The Rural World, 1750: Social Change in the English 
Countryside (New York: St. Martin's Press). 
 
Munsche, P. B. 1980. Gentlemen and Poachers: The English Game Laws 
1671-1831 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 
 
Shaw, A.G. 1966. Convicts and the Colonies (London: Faber and Faber)[ 
 
Thompson, E. P. 1975. Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act 
(New York: Pantheon). 
 
Michael Perelman 
California State University 
Chico 
 
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