CHAPTER XII. 



RURAL SPORTS. 



369. THERE are persons, who question the right of man to pursue 

 and destroy the wild animals, which are called game. Such 

 persons, however, claim the right of killing foxes and hawks : 

 yet, these have as much right to live and to follow their food as 

 pheasants and partridges have. This, therefore, in such persons, 

 is nonsense. 



370. Others, in their mitigated hostility to the sports of the 

 field, say, that it is zvanton cruelty to shoot or hunt ; and that we 

 kill animals from the farm-yard only because their flesh is necessary 

 to our oivn existence. PROVE THAT. No : you cannot. If 

 you could, it is but the &quot; tyrant s plea &quot; ; but you cannot : for 

 we know that men can, and do, live without animal food, and, if 

 their labour be not of an exhausting kind, live well too, and longer 

 than those who eat it. It comes to this, then, that we kill hogs 

 and oxen because we choose to kill them ; and, we kill game for 

 precisely the same reason. 



371. A third class of objectors, seeing the weak position of the 

 two former, and still resolved to eat flesh, take their stand upon 

 this ground : that sportsmen send some game off wounded and 

 leave them in a state of suffering. These gentlemen forget the 

 operations performed upon calves, pigs, lambs and sometimes on 

 poultry. Sir ISAAC COFFIN prides himself upon teaching the 

 English ladies how to make turkey-capons ! Only think of the 

 separation of calves, pigs, and lambs, at an early age, from their 

 mothers ! Go, you sentimental eaters of veal, sucking pig and 

 lamb, and hear the mournful lowings, whinings, and bleatings ; 

 observe the anxious listen, the wistful look, and the dropping 

 tear, of the disconsolate dams ; and, then, while you have the 

 carcasses of their young ones under your teeth, cry out, as soon 

 as you can empty your mouths a little, against the cruelty of 

 hunting and shooting. Get up from dinner (but take care to 

 stuff well first), and go and drown the puppies of the bitch, and 

 the kittens of the cat, lest they should share a little in what their 

 mothers have guarded with so much fidelity ; and, as good stuffing 

 may tend to make you restless in the night, order the geese to be 

 picked alive, that, however your consciences may feel, your bed.- 



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