HORSES AND HOUXDS. 167 



neighbour's do^s either, if they dared to set foot on the land of 

 his high mightiness. He very nearly succeeded in r»oisoning a 

 poor man also, who, finding a part of a rabbit laid upon the 

 ground where he was working, took it up, with the intention of 

 carrying it home for his supper ; when, having fortunately some 

 suspicions in his mind, he threw it to his dog instead, wliich, 

 soon after eating it, fell dead at his feet. And what has been 

 the result 1 that there is about one-third, or not so much, game 

 in these woods, after such grand proceedings, as when occupied 

 by myself, with only a woodman to look after them. 



It is the fashion in the present day to abuse the game, and 

 large game preservers, as the cause of supplying the county 

 gaols with inmates. It must be admitted that 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 justifies them,) of every reasonable 

 person. I shall be told that every lord of the creation has a 

 right to do as he likes with 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 phea- 

 sants, driven up into a corner, that his name maybe blazoned forth 

 in the paper by some -VNTetchod sycophant, as having performed 

 a praisewoiihy feat. And yet, if some unhappy wight, though 

 starving, with a wife and family, upon six or seven shillings a 

 week, should by chance appropriate one of these birds (whose 

 blood his rich neighbour has been shedding by the wholesale in 

 mere loaiiionnes?, for amusement only) to satisfy the cravings of 

 hunger, he would be condemned to two or three months' im- 

 prisonment in a loathsome gaol, and his wife and children con- 

 signed to a workliouse, his name branded for ever as a poacher 

 and ofi'ender 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 repre- 

 hensible as the battue 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 assuming to 

 justify the one, which has many excuses, it is difficult not to 

 condemn the other. To a real sportsman the mere killing of 

 the fox is no gratification. His running to ground or running 



