230 WHIP AND SPUR. 



the little public sympathy that is shown for the 

 rare attempts that are made to restrict its rights. 



It would seem natural that the farmers should 

 be its bitter opponents. It can hardly be a cheer- 

 ful sight, in March, for a thrifty man to see a 

 crowd of mad horsemen tearing through his 

 twenty acres of well-wintered wheat, filling the 

 air with a spray of soil and uprooted plants. 

 But let a non-riding reformer get up after the 

 annual dinner of the local Agricultural Associa- 

 tion and suggest that the rights of tenant-farmers 

 have long enough lain at the mercy of their land- 

 lord and his fox-hunting friends, with the rabble 

 of idle sports and ruthless ne'er-do-weels who fol- 

 low at their heels, and that it is time for them to 

 assert themselves and try to secure the prohibi- 

 tion of a costly pastime, which leads to no good 

 practical result, and the burdens of which fall so 

 heavily on the producing classes, — and then see 

 how his brother farmers will second his efforts. 

 The very man whose wheat was apparently ruined 

 will tell him that in March one would have said 

 the whole crop was destroyed, but that the stir- 



