140 MANAGEMENT OF HOUNDS. 



the battue system is carried to such an unwarrantable 

 length, that it has very naturally excited the indignation 

 and contempt (I use strong terms, but the occasion justi- 

 fies them), of every reasonable person, I shall be told 

 that every lord of the creation has a right to do as he 

 likes w^ith his own. Quite true — of course he has in 

 this free country. He has a right to butcher, in cold 

 blood, five hundred or a thousand poor wretched tame 

 pheasants, driven up into a corner, that his name may 

 be put in the paper by some wretched sycophant, as 

 having performed a praiseworthy feat. And yet, if some 

 unhappy wight, though starving, with a wife and family, 

 upon six or seven shillings a week, should by chance ap- 

 propriate one of these birds (whose blood he has been 

 shedding by the wholesale in mere wardonness for amuse- 

 ment only) to satisfy the cravings of hunger, he would be 

 condemned to two or three months' imprisonment in a 

 loathsome gaol, and his wife and children consigned to a 

 workhouse, his name branded for ever as a poacher and 

 offender against the laws of his country ! How fares it 

 with the great game preserver — has he not broken the 

 laws of his Creator by wanton barbarity, and the wanton 

 shedding of the blood of his creatures ? The illiterate 

 man, who, in some cockpit at St. Giles's, kills, or rather 

 maims a hundred rats within a given time for a bet, with 

 his dog, is not half so reprehensible as the battup man. 

 Such an act naturally excites the disgust of every right- 

 thinking mind ; but one has ignorance to plead in excuse 

 for his conduct, the other has not. 



Pretty good for a fox-hunter to run on in this strain ! 

 Is not fox-hunting quite as barbarous an amusement as 

 pheasant butchering ? Not quite, I think ; but without 



