THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



^37 



respected by all around him. And then, as the noble 

 Marquis, with whose name the toast was associated, 

 rose to respond, with what a ro:\r, too, would he be re- 

 ceived I And he would go on, like our other friend the 

 foxhunter, to say that he had always tried to show a 

 good head of game ; that, thanks to the farmers who had 

 always kept it for him, he could kill his hundreds on 

 hundreds of hares and pheasants in a day, and that he 

 only hoped they would still continue to keep up — 

 But here, too, would he be met with such a roar as 1 

 care not to chronicle. As Sterne says, " the picture we 

 have raised is too painful to pursue." I start, then, 

 with the admission, that farmers as a class are generally 

 partial to field sports. Whether it be riding to hounds, 

 backing their long-tails for the best of the course, or 

 enjoying as much as any one a day's shooting, they like 

 to have their turn occasionally. It would be absurd to 

 attempt to deny this, as useless to endeavour to conceal 

 how really many of them excel in those pastimes I 

 have mentioned. Men with tastes likes these will be 

 the first to make every allowance for their landlords, 

 and I think that if we could poll the country 

 through, we should haveanimmense majority infavour of 

 that kind of country gi-nlleman who could add " a good 

 sportsman" to hisother recommendations as a good land- 

 lord and a good man. The very wording, however, of my 

 subject of itself draws a distinction. The point of the 

 case is very similar to that of the great smoking con- 

 troversy, as so well put in one of Leech's telling cari- 

 catures. " I don't care what you say, Frank," com- 

 plains his sister Clara, " but I sliall always think it a 

 nasty, odious, dirty, filthy, disgusting habit." To 

 which Frank more calmly rejoins: "Haw! I am 

 really surprised to hear such a clever girl as you are 

 running down smoking in such strong lan^iuage; for it's 

 admitted by all sensible people, you know, that it is the 

 abuse of tobacco that's wrong." It is piecisely so 

 with game and the Game Laws. It is the abuse, 

 and not the use, we complain of. I am not one 

 of those who would argue that the game should be- 

 long to anyone who could manage to knock it down — or, 

 in other words, that it should be wholely destroyed 

 and rootc d out from amongst ua as soon as it be possi- 

 ble to eflFeet such a consummation. But I have to draw 

 the line between what is use and what is abuse — what is 

 fair sport and wl ai; is grievous injustice. In the first 

 place let us ascertain the character of the battue in the 

 eyes of the great body of Englishmen. What do nine 

 hundred and ninety- nine men out of a thousand think 

 when they read the Morning Post paragraph of what 

 the Earl of Wholesale and Retail, and three or four 

 other great Guns, did the day before yesterday at his 

 lordship's magnificent seat, The vSlaughter- house — when 

 " in the course of the morning they kiiltd some two 

 hundred head of pheasants, a hundred and fifty hares, 

 three hundred rabbits, two woodcocks and a water-hen, 

 seriously wounded a jack snipe, as well as an under- 

 keeper, and half-ruined a tenant-farmer" ? With what 

 kind of feeling is it that we regard such terrible sports- 

 men who thus blazon forth their wondrous achievements ! 

 Is it with respect ? — with a certain pride in the prowess 

 and manhood of our English gentlemen ?— Or, rather 

 with something like disgust, and an inclination to ridi- 

 cule the whole proceeding? Have they any of the true 

 attributes of sportsmen — the excitement of finding and 

 following their game — the pleasing recollection of how 

 steadily Dido hunted up to her birds — or how old Brush 

 stood to the winged pheasant in the hedge-row ? Is 

 theirs the long bracing beat, the healthful fatigue, and 

 the well-won rest that so gratefully crowns their day's 

 sport ? Or, do we picture some half-dozen gentlemen 

 lazily turning out about mid-day, and placed with all 

 due regard to rank and precedent by the head-keeper at 



certain favoured spots — at the heads of rides, and on to 

 " hot corners" — where they have nothing to do but 

 blaze away as fast as one set of men can load their guns 

 for them, and another gaog drive the game up to them. 

 What exercise — what skill — what of the pleasures or the 

 prowess of a sportsman's life is there in this ? Thi; lad 

 who gets his three shots a penny at the ring-running 

 hare in our famous home-preserves at Cremorne may be 

 quite as good a marksman ; and the worthy citizen who 

 sits in his punt under Marlow Bridge, pulling up gud- 

 geon as fast as the boatman can pull them off again, en- 

 joys a vast deal of the same sort of intense excitement 

 and glowing exertion. But it is a question whether the 

 latter be not the keener hand of the two. He docs it 

 merely for the fun of the thing, and nothing more. You 

 do not see him, when he has had enough of it, parading 

 Marlow or Maidenhead with a basket on his head, cry- 

 ing " Fine fresh gudgeon at twopence a dozen !" Or, 

 with more dignity, hastening up to town, and thus ad- 

 dressing his butcher: " Now, Mr. Giblets, as I buy my 

 meat of you, I shjll expect you to buy your fish of me. 

 One will go to square the other. Come — I have had a 

 very good hawl to-day — how many score shall I put you 

 down for ?" If the Old English gentleman we still 

 sing of and talk about — if he, whose pride it was to keep 

 his mansion at a bountiful rate, and, perhaps, whose 

 chief pleasure was to distribute the game he shot 

 amongst his friends iind neighbours — if he, I say, could 

 come again amongst us, and see his son, or his grandson, 

 selling his game as systematically as he breeds it — if he 

 could find a noble duke trying to get rid of the poachers 

 by simply underselling them with the fishmonger of his 

 county town — right heartily would he echo the edict that 

 we are but "a nation of shopkeepers." A country 

 where right honourables and very reverends degrade 

 their favourite amusement to purely a matter of busi- 

 ness, and undertake a contract to supply Mr. Fluff, the 

 poulterer, the season through, at birds so much a brace, 

 and hares so much a head. Especially careful, too, 

 may they be that no one interferes with their sport when 

 they can tell to a threepenny bit how much they may 

 be out of pocket by it. 1 never see one of those hos- 

 pitable notices, that ' ' Trespassers wilt he prrsecided, and 

 dogs ui'l be destroyed, ^^ but I fancy the sign-board reads 

 strangely incomplete. Surely it should go on to say 

 that — " Parties am be accommodated onmoderate ttrms 

 on application at the lodge. A large stock always kept 

 on hand; avd orders executed ^ciih puhcluality and 

 despatch. N.B. The trade iypplied." D) not sup- 

 pose that I am over-stating this point ; or, in case you 

 should do so, let me give you the opinion cf a country 

 gentleman, a good sportsman, a practical farmer, and a 

 member of the Council of the Royal Agricultural 

 Society of England. I mean Mr. Antony Hamond, 

 of Westacre, Norfolk. At a public dinner in that 

 county, in the spring of List year, Mr. Hamond said : 

 " The squires were fast degenerating into poulterers. 

 Things were very different now to what they were fifty 

 years ago. Game was then used as a means by which 

 gentlemen afforded amusement to the guests with whom 

 they filled their houses ; and it was a very charming 

 amusement. But, although some of those gentlemen 

 who now hired shootings showed extreme liberality and 

 kindness, yet still game had become a commercial affair, 

 and he hoped that the system would soon end in a 

 thorough bankruptcy." I think I hear a good many 

 say " Amen" to that. But, still, " this is a free coun- 

 try." "A man may do what he likes with his own;" 

 and what is it to you, or to me, or to Mr. Hamond, of 

 Westacre, if my lord chooses to add t.j his income by 

 breeding rabbits and hares for sale, just as the farmer 

 does pigs and sheep .' Unfortunately it has a great deal 

 to do with it. If my lord would on'.y follow this out, 



