THE FARMERS' BENEVOLENT. Ill 



THE FARMERS' BENEVOLENT. 



Once again let me call the attention of hunting men to the 

 Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution and its object. The 

 association has been created with a view to assisting farmers, 

 or their widows, on their attaining sixty years of age — should 

 circumstances have left them in destitution and their charac- 

 ter be unimpeached. The cases demanding such help must 

 constantly be cropping up, must be only too patent to every- 

 one who has had the opportunity of watching farming and its 

 vicissitudes in recent years ; and to no class should such dis- 

 tress appeal more strongly than to us who take our pleasure 

 through the good feeling and true English sympathies of the 

 farmers. We shall soon be making up our accounts for the 

 season past. In that reckoning the addition of a guinea will 

 make no difference to anyone who can afford to hunt at all. 

 That guinea ma}^ mean a week's living to the man (or his wife), 

 who, for the good "custom of the country" has cheered you on 

 to his farm, built up his gaps without a grumble and mended 

 Ibis rails gladly — because he himself had taken his turn with 

 hounds as long as he could, and, when he couldn't, still loved 

 to see the hunt about. 



May I put it thus ? You who ride over Leicestershire to 

 " compete " (not, I mean, in any spirit of mere personal rivalry, 

 but that from day to day you may see hounds as well as your 

 comrades), you like the sound of cracking timber, and are 

 quietly delighted that you were first to carry away the oxer for 

 your hesitating friends. You never yet cut out the work for ten 

 minutes, without }^our career having left its mark on the wood- 

 work of some good-natured farmer. 



We, again, who " go round " whenever we can — have we not 

 trodden a shameful amount of unnecessary ground ; have we 

 always left gates as we found them ; have we not sometimes 

 even stooped to the iniquity of pulling down a gap, because it 

 was stiffer than our craven hearts desired 1 And for all this 

 you and I have ever been greeted and welcomed — as forming 



