62 



I state that there will not be found live couple out of the forty that 

 will be reasonably satisfactory, and out of that five I am very sure 

 there won't be one couple perfect as regsirdsjjomts, work, and breeding. 



No, the only way to get a pack of foxhounds together with any 

 degree of satisfaction and within a reasonable time is to buy one 

 ready-made. But then, where is such to be found ? and, if found, 

 will the hounds suit the country they are required for 1 



Of course it is best to breed hounds as highly as opportunity offers, 

 to train them properly, to draft carefully, so that the pack may be 

 level and run together. But a badly-bred lot — unsteady, uneven in 

 height, and unequal in pace — if they can run and hunt a fox, assuredly 

 they have a right to be supported, and the man who keeps such in 

 preference to keeping none deserves all praise. A scratch and badly- 

 managed pack will at times, if they have good hid; show better sport 

 than the best bred and best managed pack in England will ivithout 

 good luck. 



My readers will kindly observe that I have been dealing in this 

 chapter with a pack of hounds which was of the highest class ; and 

 while I have described it with enthusiasm I am in no way prejudiced 

 against packs which are not as fortunate as the Curraghmore was. 



What we want is Sport, and we should strive to hare it by any 

 and all honourable means. 



I have known the tenant-farmer classes over many parts of Ireland 

 ever since I was a boy (particularly those residing in the hunting 

 ■country of the Curraghmore), and I had, up to within the last few 

 years, frequent opportunities of friendly intercourse with them while 

 hunting, shooting, and fishing. With that experience it is with 

 pleasure I record the fact that I never met a man in all my expeditions 

 who ever expressed the slightest antipathy to hunting or any other 

 branch of sport ; on the contrary, one and all appeared to be innate 

 siDortsmen, inheriting the title from their forefathers, in what I may 

 call "home-spun" fashion. I furthermore record as my firm con- 

 viction that our fine body of Irish peasantry would never have turned 

 against foxhunting had they not been contaminated by the doctrines 

 of the Land League, promulgated as those doctrines were by a few 

 individuals here and there who by nature were ill-disposed to every- 

 thing that was good, and who, through their own idleness and bad 

 conduct, had lost any property they might ever have possessed. 

 These derelicts of society, as is the case in all revolutions, seized the 

 ojDportunity of agitation to create a rupture, knowing that nothing 

 could make them worse off* than they were while, perhaps, some change 

 might make them a trifle better. 



I am, therefore, quite confident that the opposition shown to 

 hunting, not alone over Lord Waterford's country, but over all others 

 where it appeared in Ireland, was the result of bad teaching, and 

 ■enforced by coercion, but was never the spontaneous outcome of the 

 farmers' feelings. It was therefore monstrous that those poor people 

 should have been led astray and thus demoralised. 



