SHOULD BE PREVENTED. 219 



A hare, or a deer, put into the kennel amongst 

 them, may then be necessary. Huntsmen are 

 too fond of kennel discipline. You already 

 know my opinion of it. I never allow it but in 

 cases of great necessity : I then am always pre- 

 ' sent myself, to prevent the excess of it. To 

 prevent an improper and barbarous use of such 

 discipline, I have already told you, is one of the 

 chief objects of these letters. If what Mon- 

 taigne says be true, " that there is a certain 

 general claim of kindness and benevolence which 

 every creature has a right to from us," surely 

 we ought not to suffer unnecessary severity to 

 be used with an animal to whom we are obliged 

 for so much diversion : and what opinion ought 

 we to have of the huntsman who inflicts it on an 

 animal to whom he owes his daily bread .'' * 



Such of my hounds as are very riotous are 

 taken out by themselves on the days when they 

 do not hunt, and properly punished ; and this 



* " Perhaps it is not tlie least extraordinary circumstance 

 in these flogging- lectures, that they should be given with 

 Montaigne, or any other moral author whatever, in recol- 

 lection at the same instant ! " — (Vide Monthly Review.) 

 Perhaps it is not the least extraordinary circumstance in 

 these criticisms, that this passage should have been quoted 

 as a proof of the author's inhumanity. The critic ends his 

 strictures with the following exclamation. " Of a truth, a 



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