BRITISH SPORTS AND PASTIMES; 507 



with such poor pitiable prey ? Why not fly at higher game ? Why 

 not send their officers into the hunting provinces and on the race- 

 grounds ? Why not keep an eye on Sir Francis Burdett, the Duke 

 of Beaufort, and the Master of the King's stag hounds ? Leaving 

 the game out of the question, we will venture boldly to affirm, that 

 there is ten-fold more cruelty committed by the hunting-whip than 

 the goad ; and that the heart of a hackney coachman is as butter in 

 the dog-days, compared with that of a racing jockey. The latter, if 

 he receives instructions to win, and finds it difficult to do so, scruples 

 not adopting his own phrase to cut his horse into ribbons ; to stab 

 him violently with the spur in those parts which, above all others, 

 are most acutely sensible ! A winning race-horse, after a neck-and- 

 neck run, is often one of the most pitiable spectacles that can be con- 

 ceived. The goad of the drover, and the clumsy tool of the jarvey, 

 employed on the bullock or the callous hackney-coach horse, are but 

 play-things compared with the whip and spur of a severe jockey, 

 inflicted on the young, high-spirited, thin-skinned, delicate racing 

 filly. And what occasion, to quote the metropolitan magistrates, is 

 there for such barbarities ? None in the world, except that one 

 blackguard black-leg may beat another. 



We have certainly some British sports which may be termed 

 manly. Among these are wrestling and single-stick. But what 

 noble and gallant fox-hunter was ever known to engage in either 

 of them ? It is true that they afford as fine exercise as fox- 

 hunting ; but then they consist of a series of fair contests trials 

 of skill, in which man is opposed to man. This would not suit the 

 noble and gallant fox-hunter, who cannot enjoy himself unless the 

 odds are so immeasurably in his favour, as to reduce his personal 

 risk to nullo, unless he rides like a tailor, or has not given money 

 enough for his horse. Wrestling and single-stick are, it must be 

 confessed, the pastimes of yeomen ; but is there not a hard-riding 

 miller, or butcher, or farmer, or farrier, or chimney-sweep, in almost 

 every hunt in the kingdom ? Are not the exploits of a whole field 

 frequently eclipsed by those of a low-lived ignorant menial, the dog- 

 boy's first cousin, Jack Nasty-face, the whipper-in ? 



In a steeple-chase, the squire has often for his antagonist a friend's 

 servant ; and it is known that a sporting nobleman and his body-groom 

 frequently bet by commission, through the same agent, on races to 

 come. Indeed the whole community of gallant British sportsmen 

 are one united gang of miscreants, gamblers, and black-legs, com- 

 prising every intermediate grade, from the <c live-cat-skinner," who 

 backs his terrier in the dog-pit, to the nobleman who enters his horse 

 for the Derby ; from the pick-pocket who plays at pitch-and-toss on 

 Primrose-hill every Sunday morning, to the peer who gambles at 

 the club-house every Sunday evening. They are a band of brothers ; 

 and yet, strange to say, there is no fraternal affection among them. 

 Fox-hunters exclaim against dog-fighters ; and peers wish to put. 

 down the Primrose-hill sports of pick-pockets, without, however, 

 abolishing their own evidently anxious to 



" Compound for sins they are inclined to, 

 By damning others they've no mind to." 



