It is our pride to be “in at the death.” I confess I have often felt
no little ashamed of my brother-man--man, that “paragon of animals,”
“in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!”--as
I have listened to those wild shrieks and yells of “Who-whoop” that
proclaim--what? That a little animal has been hunted to its death. And
it is this thought from which the thinking man can never escape, and
which is to his enjoyment as the canker to the bud--the thought that
it is necessary for his pleasure that a poor little animal, in all the
agony of terror and exhaustion, should be running for its life before
him! And since this is the inevitable concomitant of the sport--even
the great and glorious sport of fox-hunting--the thinking man must
ask himself, “Am I justified--morally justified--in purchasing my
pleasure at such a price?” Can we for a moment doubt what the answer
of the thinking man must be? I do not say that all fox-hunters are
cruel men; it would be absurd, indeed, to bring such a charge. Many
good and humane men--men who would shrink from and abhor anything that
they recognised as cruel--are, nevertheless, habitual followers of
the hounds. They have persuaded themselves--it is so easy to persuade
oneself in accordance with one’s inclination, especially when the
object to which one is inclined has all the sanction of custom and long
usage--they have persuaded themselves that the sport is justifiable in
spite of the suffering which is its necessary accompaniment and result.
Or, perhaps, especially if they are young men, they have not thought
about it at all. But I cannot help the belief that, as thought and true
civilisation advance, it will be recognised that to seek pleasure in
the hunting of any animal to its death is unworthy of a thinking and
humane man. If the humane man can do these things, it must be because
he has not yet become a thinking man. If the thinking man can do them,
it must be because he is not a humane man.
And this conclusion will, I think, be fortified if we consider,
very briefly, some of the arguments by which it is sought to justify
sport of this kind. We are frequently told that the fox is a thief
and a marauder--a robber of hen-roosts--and that, therefore, he must
be destroyed. The simple answer to this is that the fox is carefully
preserved; that when foxes are scarce in a hunting country they are
imported from elsewhere; and that the man who shoots a fox is held up
to odium and scorn as guilty of the heinous crime of “vulpicide.”
But we have no sooner answered this flimsy argument than we are met by
another of a quite different character. We are told that if foxes were
not preserved to be hunted they would be exterminated; and that a fox,
if given his choice, would much prefer to take his chance of escaping
the hounds to the alternative of extermination. This is certainly a
quaint specimen of the sportsman’s logic. We are asked, in the first
place, to assume an impossibility--namely, that a fox should be endowed
with reason to enable him to consider and come to a decision upon the
suggested question; secondly, we have to assume what his answer would
be; thirdly, that that answer would be a wise one for the foxes; and,
fourthly, that man ought to be bound by it. To this puerile argument
it is sufficient to say that the question before us is not what a fox
might, in an imaginary and impossible contingency, conceivably think
best for himself, but what is right for man to do. If, therefore,
the alternative be between the extermination of foxes, by methods as
painless as may be, and their preservation to be hunted by man, I
cannot doubt in what direction the true interests of humanity will be
found to lie.
To this conclusion, then, I think our reason must inevitably lead
us, even with regard to the best and most popular of blood-sports as
practised in this country. I do not hesitate to confess that I was
brought to it with reluctance, knowing full well the pleasures of
riding over a country with hounds in front and a good horse under me.
But, in truth, the case seems too clear for argument. On one side are
inclination and pleasure, and prescription, and the false glamour of
“sport”; on the other side are “that incomparable pair”--humanity and
reason.[2]
THE WILD STAG HUNT.
But if the inexorable laws of reason and of ethics compel us to cast
our vote against “the noble science” of fox-hunting, what shall we say
of such sport as the hunting of the red deer in the West of England?
Its votaries would fain cast over it the glamour of poetry. They dilate
on the glorious country--the woods of Porlock, the bright heaths of
Exmoor, the exhilaration and excitement of a wild gallop over a wild
country in pursuit of this magnificent wild creature--“the antlered
monarch of the waste.” But we have only to turn to the acknowledged
textbooks on the subject (such as Collyns’s “Chase of the Wild Red
Deer,” for example) to learn of the horrible cruelties which are the
inevitable concomitants of this much-extolled sport--to learn how the
hunted animal, in its terror and despair, will dash over cliffs into
the sea, or vainly seek refuge in the waves from its merciless pursuers
upon the land. I will not waste time and words over it. I regard it as
a cruel form of pleasure which every humane man should shun and shrink
from. A relative of mine, who for many years acted as secretary to a
fox-hunt in the West of England, and who had a great reputation as a
rider to hounds, told me that he had once gone to see the sport on
Exmoor, and that nothing would induce him to repeat that experience, so
terrible and so disgusting were some of the things which he witnessed
there. Alas! that woman should be a participator in such cruel
deeds--ay, and pride herself on her rivalry with brutal man! But we
know the type. Their eyes are blinded lest they should see, and their
ears closed lest they should hear. They know no better. They have never
learned to think![3]
Here again we are told there is only one alternative: either these deer
must be preserved to be hunted or they must be exterminated. But again,
also, there can be no doubt as to what our choice should be. We should
lament the loss of these wild denizens of the forest and the moor; but
better, far better, would it be that their lives should be ended, as
painlessly as may be, by the rifle, than that they should be preserved
for a sport which is an outrage upon humanity.
SHOOTING.
I have touched upon hunting; let us now consider the twin-sport of
shooting, and let us first consider it in its most favourable aspect.
How well do I remember those bright September evenings, long ago,
when the rays of the westering sun, striking obliquely on the ruddy
clover-heads, bathed them in the rosy light of a summer that still
lingered on “the happy autumn fields”! Youth, health, and hope were
ours then--youth, health, and hope, and friends! Life lay all before
us; and, what was more to the purpose for the present moment, before
us, too, were the partridges--a covey scattered among those smiling
clover-heads. We go forward to beat them up with all the joy and
excitement of that golden time when life has not yet been saddened by
the pale cast of thought. The birds rise before us, singly, or in twos.
The last shots are fired. The old retriever picks up the fallen game.
Then we turn homewards, just as the glorious sun sinks at last behind
the high Hampshire hills, and “barred clouds bloom the soft-dying
day.” Were we then guilty of cruelty? I answer “No,” because the moral
qualities of an act exist only in the mind of the agent,
“For there is nothing either good or bad
But thinking makes it so;”
and it had never occurred to us to question the morality of a sport
which gave us such days of happiness, such nights of unbroken repose.
And truly, if we admit, for the sake of argument, at any rate, and
making no assumption as against the vegetarian, that it is legitimate
for man to use birds and beasts for his food, I see not much that can
be justly said in condemnation of shooting such as this. If birds
may be used for food, how better can they be killed than by the gun?
And thus it appears that it is that much-maligned and much-ridiculed
individual the “pot-hunter” who is the best justified of all the
shooting confraternity!
Again, if rabbits must be kept under for the sake of agriculture (a
proposition which few will be found to dispute), it is certainly
far better that they should be shot than be taken by that hideous
instrument of torture, the steel trap, or the hardly less cruel
contrivance known as “the wire.”
But when we come to the shooting of artificially reared and carefully
preserved pheasants, and especially to what is known as “battue
shooting,” very different considerations arise. Let us take an instance.
The short December day has drawn to a close. There has been warm
work in the coverts. A thousand head of game--pheasants, hares, and
rabbits--have been brought to bag. In fact, we have had, not indeed a
tremendous battue, as these things are reckoned nowadays, but simply “a
jolly day’s covert-shooting.” But now darkness--thick, gloomy, winter
darkness--has settled down like a pall upon the woods. There is some
snow upon the ground, and with the night has come a sharper frost and
a bitter, piercing wind. But what is that to us as we gather together
in the warm dining-room, where the lamps are so bright, where the
logs burn so keenly, and where thick curtains ward off the draughts
of that nipping, eager air, and deaden the sound of the gusts moaning
fitfully without? How delightful a festive dinner like this after our
day of woodland sport! And yet, as I have raised the first glass of
champagne to my lips, a thought has sometimes come to me which has gone
nigh to spoil my pleasure. It is the thought of that cover where the
fun was so fast and furious, and which literally seemed to swarm with
game. I picture it as it is _now_ under the darkness of night. There,
within sight of the bright lights around which we are so joyously
gathered, _there_ are scores--hundreds may be--of miserable creatures
with mangled limbs and bleeding wounds; some with hind-legs broken,
dragging themselves piteously over the frosty ground; some writhing in
agony which death comes all too slowly to relieve. Ah, if that wounded
hare could speak, as she looks at the line of light streaming from
our dining-room windows, what a curse might she not breathe against
the cruel savages within! What a contrast! _Here_, light, warmth,
and pleasure; _there_, darkness, cold, and pain unspeakable! Are not
_these_ considerations which should give us pause?
And can it be denied that the man who has learnt to stand at “a warm
corner” unmoved while wounded beasts and birds are struggling or
piteously crawling in agony all around him, who can listen unmoved
to the terrible cry of the wounded hare--a cry like that of a child
in pain--can it be denied that that man, who has so deadened his
susceptibility to the sufferings of his humble and helpless kindred of
the animal world, has himself suffered grievous injury to that which is
best in human nature--that sacred instinct of compassion, wherein some
thinkers of no mean order have thought they discerned the origin and
the very basis of morality?
And what a curse to our country is this selfish mania for the
preservation of game--preservation for the purpose of destruction! For
this are the country-folk warned off from the quiet woodland ways; for
this are the children prohibited from entering the copses to gather
wild-flowers; for this are enclosures made, barbed-wire fences erected,
footpaths and commons filched from the public, and the landless still
further excluded from the land; for this must temptation be constantly
set before the eyes of the labourer; for this must the offender
against the game laws be called up for sentence before a tribunal
of game-preservers; for this must the woods and the country-side be
denuded of their most delightful inhabitants--the jay and the magpie,
with their lustrous plumage and wild cries; the squirrel, embodiment of
life and graceful activity, with his curious winning ways; the quaint,
harmless, and interesting little hedgehog; the owl, with its long-drawn
melancholy note, as it hawks in the summer moonlight--for this must
wood-sides be disfigured by impudent notice-boards, telling us, in the
arrogant language of the rich Philistine, that “All trespassers will
be prosecuted, all dogs destroyed”; for this must millions of innocent
creatures be pitilessly condemned to shocking mutilations and atrocious
agonies, long drawn out. Such is “Merry England” under the rule of the
game-preserver!
“Strange that where Nature loved to trace
As if for gods a dwelling-place,
There man, enamoured of distress,
Should mar it into wilderness.”
I have now briefly considered those blood-sports which are generally
spoken of as “legitimate” sports--namely, hunting and shooting.
“But,” someone will ask me, “what of hare-hunting, and coursing, and
otter-hunting--are not these ‘legitimate’ sports also?”
Well, over these I care not to delay; a few words will suffice for each.
HARE-HUNTING AND OTTER-HUNTING.
Well has it been said that
“Poor is the triumph o’er the timid hare.”
It is to my mind indeed a pitiable form of pleasure that men should
go forth to hunt to death this, the most timorous of animals. Even in
the days of bluff King Hal, when humanitarians were indeed few and far
between, and it was hardly recognised that men had any duties to the
lower animals, there was found a great and good and enlightened man to
raise his voice in protest against this sport. “What greater pleasure
is there to be felt,” wrote Sir Thomas More in his “Utopia,” “when a
dog followeth a hare than when a dog followeth a dog? For one thing is
done in both--that is to say, running, if thou hast pleasure therein.
But if the hope of slaughter and the expectation of tearing in pieces
the beast doth please thee, thou shouldest rather be moved with pity to
see a silly, innocent hare murdered of a dog, the weak of the stronger,
the fearful of the fierce, the innocent of the cruel and unmerciful.”
Ought we not to feel some shame if we have not advanced farther than
this old teacher of nearly four hundred years ago? But it seems that
the age of King George V. has still something to learn from the age of
King Henry VIII.
And but a few years later, in the reign of that famous King’s still
more famous daughter, in “the spacious times,” when kindness to poor
animals was but little thought of, do we not hear the voice of the
great poet who is not of an age, but for all time, in an exquisite
description of the miseries of the hunted hare?--
“By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs, with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still.
Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;
And now his grief may be compared well
To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell.
“Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch
Turn and return, indenting with the way;
Each envious briar his weary legs doth scratch;
Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay.
For misery is trodden on by many,
And, being low, never relieved by any.”
And here let me say that, if some of us have been loud in our protest
against hare-hunting by schoolboys (and I refer especially to the case
of the Eton beagles), it is because we believe it to be of paramount
importance that this duty of kindness to animals should be inculcated
upon the young; that this sacred instinct of compassion should be
fostered in young minds; and that boys should be restrained from
pursuits which tend to deaden this best of all human feelings.
“’Tis education forms the common mind;
Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.”
And who shall say what harm may be done to character, if the men who
are responsible for education allow it to be supposed by those under
their charge that animal suffering is a thing of no account?
As to otter-hunting, or the “otter-worry,” as it is better called,
it is a kind of sport of which I have seen a good deal in bygone
days, but which I always found abominable. Let me give one example
from my own experience. It is a lovely day and a lovely country. The
beautiful River Plym is flowing clear and cool in its lower valley
depths, between wood-clad hills. I see before me an old quarry-pool.
Precipitous rocks stand over it. One little stream, or adit, alone
connects it with the river. At the farther end, away from the entrance
of this adit, the hillside slopes more gradually, and is covered with
broken fragments of rock and quarried stone. On my left the pool lies
open to the woods. We had found an otter in the morning, and it was
supposed that the creature had taken refuge in the “clitter of rocks”
above the pool. Accordingly, men armed with otter-spears, and aided
by terriers, endeavour to dislodge it. Suddenly another otter, much
larger than the one we have been hunting, emerges from this retreat
and dashes into the water. Instantly the pool is surrounded by excited
hunters. A man with a spear stands at the adit-head, blocking that
way of escape. The water is alive with swimming hounds, while others
stand baying on the banks. Now, an otter can stay long under water,
but it must rise at intervals for breath; so, after a pause, we hear
the shout of “Hoo, gaze!” and I catch sight of a small dark face and
large brown eyes for one moment above the surface of the pool. Again
and again, at ever-shortening intervals, I see that face appear and
disappear. I can never forget it--that wild, scared face, and the
terror of those hunted eyes! There is no possibility of escape. Hounds
and “sportsmen”--yes, and “sportswomen” too--surround the pool, and
the only exit is carefully and effectually guarded. The otter, wildest
and most timid of animals, must either attempt to run the gauntlet or
be actually drowned in the pool. Only one thought possesses me--that
of sickening compassion for this poor, beautiful, hunted creature.
Men--and, good heavens! women too--seem frenzied with the desire to
kill. No thought of pity seems to dawn upon their minds. So at length,
amid yelling men and baying hounds, the wretched “beast of the chase”
is forced for dear life’s sake to try the desperate shift of taking to
the land, in the vain hope of finding sanctuary in the friendly waters
of the Plym, that are so near and yet so far. Vain hope indeed! Scarce
twenty yards of flight, and the hounds roll her over. From the carcass
thus barbarously done to death the “pads” are cut off as trophies by
the huntsman, and the master goes through the ceremony of “blooding”
his little son, who has now seen his first “kill.” The boy’s cheeks
and forehead are smeared with blood from one of the dripping “pads,”
and the “young barbarian” goes home swelling with pride at this savage
decoration. What a lesson for him! Thus is the rising generation taught
to be gentle and compassionate, and to love “all things, both great
and small”! O Sport, what horrible things are done in thy name! How
long shall the nation continue to bow the knee to this false god--this
bloody Moloch of Sport?
SPURIOUS SPORTS.
But of all the sports of killing which we have hitherto reviewed, this
much at least may be said--namely, that they are concerned with the
hunting or shooting of wild animals at liberty, in their native haunts.
We now have to consider certain other blood-sports, the differentiating
feature of which is that they are concerned with the hunting or
shooting of animals liberated from captivity for that purpose. Such
are rabbit-coursing, the hunting of carted deer, and the shooting of
pigeons from traps, which are very commonly referred to as “spurious
sports”--a title which they most justly merit.
On pigeon-shooting I will not waste many words. To shoot a strong
“blue rock,” released from one of five traps, at a rise of between
twenty and thirty yards, is not, as some people think, an easy thing
to do. On the contrary, it is a very difficult thing to do, the result
being that, even when good shots are competing, many birds get away
wounded, to die a lingering death. Moreover, if a test of skill be all
that is required, the clay pigeon answers the purpose quite as well
as, if not better than, the living bird. I might dwell, too, on the
injuries sometimes done to the birds when closely packed in hampers for
transport purposes. But it is, I think, sufficient to say that it is
now generally recognised in this country that the practice of shooting
captive birds from traps has about it none of the elements of “sport”
properly so-called. It is a mere medium for betting and money-making,
or money-losing, without any of those healthy, invigorating, and
athletic concomitants which do something to redeem genuine “sport”
from the reproach of cruelty; and if cruelty be the unjustifiable
infliction of pain, then it can, I think, hardly be doubted that
pigeon-shooting must be classed among cruel sports. Of this opinion
was the House of Commons thirty-one years ago; for in the year 1883 a
Bill passed through that House, on second reading, to put down this
spurious sport by law. And to show how poorly it is now esteemed, even
in fashionable circles, it may be mentioned that the Hurlingham Club,
where pigeon-shooting was once regularly carried on, some years ago
decided to prohibit this unworthy practice in their grounds.
It remains to consider the two spurious sports of rabbit-coursing and
the hunting of carted deer. Let us take the latter first.
What are the animals employed for this form of fashionable amusement?
They are park-bred deer, kept in paddocks or stables, and carefully fed
and exercised. It is said on behalf of the “stag-hunters” (so called)
that to do the deer any injury is the last thing they wish for; on the
contrary, their desire is to recapture the animal alive and well, in
order that he or she may afford sport another day. This, doubtless, is
true enough; but, unfortunately, the deer is terrified by the chase,
and becomes exhausted in the course of it. Unfortunately, too, there
are such things as spiked iron railings and barbed-wire fences, to
say nothing of walls and other obstacles with which the hunted deer
is confronted in his cross-country flight. The result is inevitable,
and such as all reasoning men know to be inevitable--namely, that from
time to time terrible “accidents,” as they are euphemistically called,
take place, some of which, but by no means all, find their way into the
columns of our newspapers. Thus, to give an example, it twice happened
within a period of eight months that a miserable hunted deer impaled
itself upon a spiked iron fence at Reading, which in its terror it
essayed to jump, but which in its exhaustion it failed to clear. I
could give case after case in which a hunted deer has lacerated itself
in the attempt to leap a barbed-wire fence; broken a leg, or perhaps
(more mercifully) its neck, in trying to clear a gate or wall; cut
and wounded itself by jumping on a greenhouse or glass frames; fallen
exhausted before the hounds, and been bitten and torn by them; sought
refuge in a river, canal, or pond, and been drowned by the pursuing
pack. Ten such cases are known to have occurred in six months with one
pack only, hunting in the Home Counties, and six tame deer were done to
death by that same pack within that period.
These cases formed the subject of questions put by me to the late
Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, in the House of Commons.
I should like to quote his answer given to one of such questions on
March 14, 1907: “If such cruelties are perpetrated, and we can do
anything to stop them, I shall be very glad. I am against cruelty of
any sort, whether under the name of sport or otherwise. I like it
rather less under the cloak of sport than otherwise.” Nay, this cruel
and contemptible travesty of sport was once, in a lucid interval,
condemned, even by that well-known and recognised organ of sport, _The
Field_, “the country gentleman’s newspaper.” For in _The Field_ of
September 3, 1892, we read as follows:
“If we look at this fiction of chase from an unprejudiced
standpoint, we must admit that it is only prescription and
usage which enable us to retain it in our sporting schedule and
to tolerate it as legitimate. Strictly speaking, it stands on
the same footing as bull and bear baiting, both of which have
had to go to the wall under the influence of what is called the
march of civilization.”[4]
Need I say more? Surely the case is too clear for argument--except,
indeed, for certain peers in the Gilded Chamber, whose hidebound
prejudice seems to be impervious to reason!
So much for the hunting of carted deer, the spurious sport of the
rich. What shall we say of rabbit-coursing, which has been described
as the sport of the poor, but which would, I think, be better called
“the spurious sport of the spurious poor”? Here, too, I can speak as
an eye-witness, and I will repeat the description of what I saw, as it
appeared in a London newspaper: