90 STAG-HUNTIXG 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, w^e 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 will 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 years 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 estabhshment, 1 hojie in the; following pages to 

 establish the exaggeration of the grave charge of systematic 



' Probably he had in his niiiid the opening words of Xenophon's essay on 

 Hunting. 



