382 DESPICABLE FEROCITY OF FOX-HUNTING. 



which is, as yet, capable of giving evidence against burglars at the 

 Old Bailey. 



Of the deplorable ferocity induced by a criminal career of fox- 

 hunting, we could adduce numerous instances. One or two will 

 suffice to shew that no fox-hunter ought to be either a magistrate or 

 a Member of Parliament a legislator for either man or brute. In a 

 recent " burst," a staunch sportsman, by dint of hard riding, killed 

 a capital horse the animal died in the field : the monster's com- 

 panions in iniquity did not deplore the fate of the quadruped they 

 condoled with the proprietor, on the pecuniary loss he had suffered 

 he having given two hundred guineas for the murdered beast, two 



days before. About three years ago, a rigid owner of fox-hounds 



having detected a young member of the pack in the heinous act of 

 opening upon the track of a hare, had the delinquent tied to a tree, 



and, with the couples, larrupped to death by his whipper-in. In 



Warwickshire, not long ago, a disgusting monster, who rides at least 

 20 stone renowned in the annals of fox-hunting having put his 

 horse to a prodigious fence, which the noble creature succeeded in 

 clearing, but knuckled for a moment on alighting, under the prodigious 

 super-stratum of animal filth, the rider punished him for his fault, 

 by " paying away" upon his head, with the iron hammer at the butt- 

 end of his whip, until he had literally beaten one of the animal's eyes 

 out. Is such a man, or such a man's fellow, worthy of being a ma- 

 gistrate or a legislator ? No his proper location is at the cart's tail, 

 with a bulky beadle, armed with a cat-o'-nine-tails, at his left elbow. 



It is truly gratifying, to find that some landholders are at length 

 becoming conscious of the absurdity and atrocity of the fox-hunting 

 system, although the majority are still such <( social tigers," that it 

 would not surprize us, to hear that one of the pack had stood up in 

 Parliament, to propose a general battue and hunting-down of the 

 Irish, by a large importation of blue-coats and blood-hounds. No 

 recent paragraph in the public prints has given us such positive satis- 

 faction, as the following : 



" CRUSADE AGAINST OLD ENGLISH SPORTS. A bitch-fox and two dog- 

 foxes, were recently destroyed, by order of Mr. James, of Barking Hall, the 

 property of the Earl of Ashburnham, whose ancestors, at one time, kept 

 three packs of hounds. We hear that orders have been given by Sir W. 

 Middleton, and Mr. Wilson, to their keepers, to destroy every fox they can 

 find." 



This is as it should be. If foxes be " felons," as they are termed 

 in our sporting slang, let them be extirpated destroyed ; but not 

 hunted to the highest pitch of agony, and then torn piecemeal, to the 

 destruction of the farmer's crops, for the mere amusement of a set of 

 aristocratical savages. 



