28 A HUNTING CATECHISM 



if miserly inclined. " Capping " has been tried 

 with some packs, but it is not carried out with the 

 thoroughness with which it is in Ireland, where it 

 is universal. The English packs seem to make 

 too high a charge, which it is an object with 

 some persons to avoid by any possible device. 

 Irish packs invariably have one uniform charge 

 of 2s. 6d., which every one pays except tenant- 

 farmers — whether a subscriber or not — and which 

 is levied at the meet, or on the road to the 

 first draw. 



In some cases where there are many rich men 

 in a hunt, and the committee is entirely com- 

 posed of such, the case of poorer residents is apt 

 to be overlooked when fixing the amount of 

 hunt subscriptions. Twenty-five or thirty pounds 

 seems nothing to a man who counts his income by 

 many thousands per annum, but it is a very great 

 source of anxiety to the younger brother, or 

 professional man, who has only a few hundreds 

 a year to reckon upon, and a family to provide 

 for, and who may be a far better sportsman than 

 his richer compeer. Many such have to forego 

 little luxuries to be enabled to hunt at all : they 

 travel third-class, make the threadbare old suit 

 last another year, and economise in numbers of 

 ways that the rich man would never dream of, 

 who need not deny himself anything in order 

 to find the wherewithal for his hunting. And 

 yet both are expected to pay the same subscription, 

 in order to be qualified to wear the hunt button ! 

 It is the many small men, not a few rich men, 

 who are the backbone of every hunt, and if 

 hunting is to be but a rich man's sport, it will 

 not survive the attacks of its enemies. 



