straight Talks on Hunt Subscriptions 



The quarrel engendered would become an awk- 

 ward one, as the hunting-field is open to all, 

 according to an unwritten law. I cannot imagine 

 a case of a subscription being refused from an 

 unobjectionable person for the sole reason that 

 there was no room for him. The annual cry is, 

 however, ** Still they come." There is no wish 

 to-day that less people should hunt : it is that 

 their money should be more evenly disseminated. 



A magazine exploited the idea not many years 

 ago (five, to be exact) that the old system of hunt 

 clubs should be reintroduced ; that the club 

 should be a social one, and new members only 

 admitted as a vacancy occurred. They should 

 have the exclusive right of hunting. The scheme's 

 feasibility broke down at first sight. How are you 

 to obtain your exclusive right ? How enforce the 

 rights if the sporting public refused to recognise 

 it ? Besides, exclusive hunting rights were prac- 

 tically abolished here by a Lincolnshire gentleman 

 called Robin Hood at the end of the twelfth 

 century. As matters now are, some countries are 

 (and always will be) deserted while others are 

 overcrowded. 



How can you make a deserted country attractive 

 to hunting-men ? The late Mr. Assheton Smith 

 answered this when he made the Tedworth country, 

 though he encountered the strongest opposition 

 from his own father. The Rev. ''Jack" Russell 



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