62 ETPEDS AND QUADRUPEDS. 



prejudice influences, all confidence in what he 

 asserts ceases. It would be absurd to maintain that 

 there is no cruelty in hunting, it is equally absurd to 

 suppose that those patronising it must be cruel ; it 

 may be said it is cruel to turn out a stag and run him 

 till his animal powers are exhausted ; no man of 

 common sense, of candour, and truth, can deny that, 

 to a certain extent, it is so ; but when we take into 

 consideration that a hunting deer is kept all the year 

 in positive luxury, has as much liberty as is neces- 

 sary to his health, has the choicest of food provided 

 for him, without his having the trouble of seeking it, 

 that he is comfortably sheltered from inclemency of 

 weather, and lives free from danger for three hun- 

 dred and sixty days of the year, — it is not certainly 

 taxing him very heavily, to make him exert himself 

 five or six times during a hunting season. It may be 

 further averred, that it is cruel to confine him ; some 

 deprivation he undergoes in this respect, no doubt, 

 and the theory and imagery of his roaming over his 

 native wilds in all the proud consciousness of 

 freedom, sounds well, and is very well, during that 



