THE HORSE. 307 



classes, who ought, as well as their superiors, to be 

 indulged in their recreative sports : this certainly 

 wears too much the appearance of a sham plea ; in- 

 dicating but too plainly, that an attachment to cruel 

 sports, grounded on ancient prejudice, is by no means 

 confined to the lower people. There seems, however, 

 no danger apprehended, or hesitation used, in res- 

 training those in their harmless pastimes, by inter- 

 dicting skittles, this or that game ; the whole dread 

 and apprehension subsists in withholding from them 

 the indispensable gratification of dipping their hands 

 in blood, and the exercise of the most fiendish and 

 diabolical barbarity. This surely must afford a rare 

 moral lesson to a population, unfortunately become 

 the most immoral and profligate in Europe. But in 

 fact, the labouring classes of this country are not so 

 needy and deficient in sports and amusements, how- 

 ever they may be in the solid and serious means of 

 subsistence, as to be unable to spare one single item 

 from the list ; and if I know any thing of their habits 

 and manners, they are not the class who would most 

 regret the loss of animal baiting, they would still 

 have remaining, a superabundant variety of sportive 

 exercises (would that those employments by which 

 their daily bread must be earned, were also abundant) 

 and might be induced to abandon baiting with little 

 opposition and few murmurs ; and with the aid of so 

 salutary a lesson, and by the instructions of those 

 whose duty it is to watch over the public morals, 

 they might be brought to concede to poor beasts that 

 fair play, which they have been taught to allow to 

 each other in their pugilistic contests. As to the fair 



