THE SPORTSMAN IN RETIREMENT. 339 



mistaken and miscliievous clique^ that are so fond of 

 croaking and making nuisances in Hyde Park, and 

 suggesting the most absurd things to our gracious 

 Queen, are totally worthless and irapracticahle ; 

 and that feeding the labouring classes has no 

 more to do with their real intentions than the 

 love of a Chinaman for a dead and putrid ])ig has 

 to do with the probability of his desire to keep a 

 clean stye for a fattened hog. We find these 

 demagogues, as I have previously said, trying to 

 deprive the people of the annual supply of tliirty 

 thousand tons of rabbit food, without one avail- 

 able suo:2restion from them as to how so liiY^jrc a 

 deficiency of meat was to be met. In fact, there 

 exists no immediate way of meeting a deficiency 

 so establislied. 



To take an idea from ' Guy jMannering,' when 

 Meg Merrilies tells Dirk Hatteraick, in the 

 cave, that he ^' will be hung," and lie replies that 

 '^ the hemp is not grown that will do it," — an 

 assertion met by her '' that it {6- sown, it is grown, 

 it is hacked, and it's mown," — so with Meg Mer- 

 rilies we cannot say of the meat that is to take 

 the place of the rabbits. We, if we ever could do it, 



should have to l^reed more largely, and to await the 



z2 



