THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



from the speech of an eminent counsel, who was defending five 

 persons, indicted for having riotously assembled for the purpose 

 of witnessing a prize tight, and resisted the authority of an officer 

 employed by the magistrates to disperse them. " As to the 

 practice of boxing, a great deal has been said about it of late, 

 and the counsel for the prosecution has endeavoured to work 

 upon the feelings of the jury by stating that such encounters 

 sometimes terminate fatally. The common law of England had, 

 however, made wrestling, cudgel-playing, and even bull-baiting, 

 legal : people assembled to witness or engage in those national 

 pastimes — those manly exercises of Englishmen — did not as 

 much as come within the definition of a riotous or unlaw^ful 

 assembly, yet wrestling and bull-baiting often terminated 

 fatally. Such sports, however, preserved the health, the vigour, 

 and the characteristic courage of the English people, and 

 our brave ancestors had, therefore, looked upon them with 

 indulgence. He asked the jury to look at the practice of 

 boxing, not through the medium of a mawkish sentimentality, 

 but with the feelings of sensible and manlj^ Englishmen, 

 who partook of the generous courage which had raised this 

 country above all the other nations on the earth. He had 

 heard it observed, by one of the greatest advocates in West- 

 minster Hall, that the same God who made man rational 

 also made him resentful. It was, indeed, characteristic of 

 Englishmen to be resentful of insult, but not vindictive. 

 They preferred returning an insult or a blow at the instant, 

 to cherishing a spiteful recollection for an opportunity of 

 dark and malignant revenge. They were prone to the manly 

 habit of lighting out their quarrels on the spot, and retaining 

 no ill-will afterwards. They did not, like the people of Italy, 

 avenge their exasperated feelings by the cowardly use of the 

 stiletto ; nor, like the people of Portugal or Spain, by the knife ; 

 neither did they gouge and maim their antagonists with the 

 savage barbarism of North America. The practice of boxing 

 in a ring taught them the observance of fair play. To that the 

 infrequency of assassination in England was to be attributed. 

 He did not mean to say that lighting of any description was 

 not an evil, but he confidently asserted that it could not be 

 put down without a greater evil arising out of its suppression. 

 Boxing-matches could not be abolished without encouraging 

 assassination ; and to such a lamentable change in the English 



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