HUNTING IN GRASS COUNTRIES 311 



the people who ride over their land are strangers and 

 not the neighbours they know. If they would only 

 consider it, that is the very best thing possible for 

 them. There is a continual stream of members of 

 both Houses of Parliament, men of business, lawyers, 

 financiers, authors, journalists, fairly well-to-do men 

 of every class in fact, flowing into the fashionable 

 countries. Masters of hounds, secretaries of hunts 

 and committee men are always dinning into the ears 

 of these visitors the fact that hunting is not a right, 

 but a privilege for which we have to thank the farmers. 

 Thus large classes of people, who would never have 

 come in contact with the agricultural classes, are 

 taught to know and to respect them. To know the 

 English farmer is not only to respect but to like him, 

 and thus to every part of England Leicestershire 

 hunting fields send out a number of well-wishers and 

 earnest advocates of the farmer's interests. In my 

 opinion hunting is the farmer's best instrument of 

 power, and indeed stands between him and social and 

 political insignificance, and I think my readers will 

 agree with me that the farmers have used their power 

 not only kindly and well, but judiciously. They have 

 protested, and rightly, when hunting men have shown 

 a disposition to disregard their rights, but they have 

 never taken any steps seriously to injure the sport. 

 Farmers know well that if once they stopped hunting 

 in any district, they might not find it restarted again. 

 It must be evident too that in hunting countries 

 farmers who oppose hunting are not popular with the 

 classes above and below them and have not the general 

 sympathy of their own fellows. The farmer who 

 keeps up his wire in a hunting district is naturally 

 not a favourite with the business people, for he drives 

 away custom, nor with the labourers, whose sympathies 



