90 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



friendly character, and, although we disagreed, we did not 

 misunderstand. At least, speaking for myself, I certainly 

 never misunderstood Mr. Stratton's attitude. Honest dis- 

 agreement never hurt anybody. Mr. Stratton and I started 

 and parted very good friends, as far as our personal relations 

 at that time were concerned. I trust, though the exigencies 

 of politics have severed us, we so continue. 



But admitting the root and branch opposition to the 

 Buckhounds to be honest in its sentiment and single-hearted 

 in its aim ; admitting that it has no dark designs upon hunt- 

 ing, shooting, fishing, or any of our institutions, from beer 

 to skittles ; is it quite honest in its argument ? 



By all means let the case against the Buckhounds be 

 stated with zeal and conviction. But let it be stated fairly, 

 and — at the risk of repetition — I say it is not fair to represent 

 the exception as the rule. 



Hunting the carted deer has always had — and I suppose 

 always w^ll have — its critics and its apologists. I am not 

 going to attempt any further controversial apologia. It 

 would only be tiresome, and I dare say as unconvincing as 

 apologias usually are. Plato — I am quoting the tainted 

 authority of a sporting writer, and I have not been able to 

 discover the passage ^ — laid it down that hunting was a divine 

 institution. I do not suggest that Plato would have included 

 modern stag-hunting, and I advance no such claim on its 

 behalf. Tried by the purest standards of hunting, it cannot, 

 to my mind, take rank with fox-hunting. But during the 

 last four or five j^ears the Buckhounds have become the 

 villains of politics. Sins are laid to their charge which they 

 know not of. Speaking as one most intimately connected 

 with the establishment, I hope in the following pages to 

 establish the exaggeration of the grave charge of systematic 



' Probably he had in his mind the o^jening words of Xenophon's essay on 

 Hunting. 



