THE RATIONALE OF HUNTING 25 



assume that on the average, there are 100 horses used 

 exclusively for hunting purposes, that is, 15,000 horses 

 are kept in England for fox-hunting. Take the average 

 life of a horse in the hunting-field at five years, and the 

 average price paid for him £100, we find that £300,000 

 is annually spent in England on horses used for fox- 

 hunting, a large proportion of which sum must go into 

 the pocket of the breeder, i.e. the farmer. Then we 

 must take into consideration the enormous number of 

 horses, which, though not used exclusively for hunting, 

 would not be bred, purchased, and kept if it were not 

 for hunting. We allude to covert hacks, trappers, and 

 the numerous class of horses who do duty both between 

 the shafts and in the hunting-field. It would take the 

 work of a Eoyal Commission receiving reports from 

 every county in England, to arrive at any approximate 

 number of the horses indirectly taking part in hunting. 

 Suffice it to say, that if hunting were abolished, this 

 country would lose its position as the first horse- 

 breeding country in the world, and agricultural depres- 

 sion would be succeeded by the extinction of agriculture. 

 These are people, no doubt, who would not regard this 

 extinction as being of much importance to our national 

 welfare, and would not be sorry to see England a huge 

 workshop, or a large market garden. But England 

 could never be the workshop of the world, on account of 

 the want of raw material, and every costermonger who 

 has been to Co vent Garden market knows that it could 

 never be a market garden, when, as it is, fruit is left to 

 rot on the trees, because it is not worth the price of 

 picking. The importation of foreign meat has done 

 much to militate against profitable cattle-raising, and 

 the price of wheat is so low that the English farmer 

 can hardly grow wheat at a profit. Horse-breeding, 



