Part 14

Consider, for instance, the exquisite pleasure, surely one of the greatest joys in life, of seeing perfect confidence and fearlessness in the beings around one--the intrepidity which is the special charm of children, when well-treated, and which is characteristic of animals also, in the rare cases when they have nothing to fear from man. We know with what child-like trust and guilelessness the primitive inhabitants of the West Indies greeted their Spanish discoverers, and how the wild animals in newly-found lands have often shown the same unguarded friendliness to man, until they knew better--or worse. The pleasure of the humanitarian consists in preserving and cherishing to the uttermost this friendly relationship; the pleasure of the sportsman consists in rending and shattering it, in making a hell out of a heaven, and is sowing distrust and terror where there might be confidence and love. _Chacun à son goût._ It is useless to dispute about tastes. But that the sportsman should proceed to denounce the humanitarian as being “a spoiler of pleasure” is a stroke of unintended humour from a very humourless source.

The part which the sportsman plays in the animal world--that world which might be a source of much genuine pleasure to us--may be easily pictured if we look at one of the London parks where the bird-life is protected. There we see a truce reigning between human and non-human, with a vast amount of obvious human enjoyment as the result. Imagine what would happen if a man were to run with a gun or some other weapon among the unsuspecting animals, and pride himself on the dexterity with which he reduced them from beautiful living creatures to limp and ugly carcases. He would be arrested as a lunatic, you say, by the park-keepers. True; yet that is exactly the way in which the sportsman is continually running amuck in this larger park of ours, the world, where unfortunately there are as yet no park-keepers to restrain him.

Nor is it only the sportsman, but everyone addicted to cruel practices of any sort, who makes the world a poorer and less happy place to live in. Centuries of persecution have, in fact, left so little _real_ happiness in life that men have been fain to content themselves with these wretched beggarly amusements, which, from bull- and bear-baiting to stag-hunting, have disgraced our national “sports” from time immemorial, yet have always been defended on the ludicrous ground that their abolition would diminish the “pleasures” of the people.

Who, then, is the mar-joy? Surely not the humanitarian, whose desire it is that there should be far greater and wider means of enjoyment than at present, and who, far from discouraging the sports of the people, would establish in every part of the land facilities for manly and wholesome sports, such as cricket, football, rowing, swimming, running, and all kinds of athletic and gymnastic exercises. To humanitarians, pleasure--real pleasure--is the one precious thing; and it is just because there is so little real pleasure in the present conditions of life that we desire to see those conditions changed and ameliorated. Why else should we “agitate,” sit in committees, write letters to newspapers, and organise public meetings to expound our principles? Certainly, not because we enjoy such occupation in itself, for a more thankless task could scarcely be imagined; but because life is at present so narrowed and saddened by brutalitarian stupidity that to try to alter it, even in the smallest measure, is to us a necessary condition of any enjoyment at all.

INDEX

Accidents involved by hunting, 66

Adams, Maurice, on cost of sport, 45 _et seq._

Afforestation conflicts with game preservation, 53

Agriculture ruined by sport, 38

Athletic exercises compared with blood-sports, 129

Badgers as “vermin,” 88

“Bag,” a six weeks’, 104

Balance of Nature upset, 40

“Battue,” horrors of the, 83

“Battue-shooting,” 13

Beagles: Eton, 18; _Tom Brown_ on Rugby, 125; forbidden by original statutes, 117; not legalised until 1871, 117; Dr. Warre’s attitude _re_, 116; strength of the opposition to, 124

Big-game hunting: Mr. Ernest Bell on, 101; monotony of, 101, 102

“Blooding,” 155

Blood-sports: not manly, 56, 112, 136; at schools, 116

Buchanan, Robert, quoted, 69, 150

Buckhounds, abolition of Royal, 100, 130

Buddha, humane teachings of, 29

Burmese, the, and compassion, 29

Burns, Robert, on shooting, 93

Byron, Lord, on angling, 178

Callousness of fox-hunting, the, 95

Carlisle otter hounds, 30

Carpenter, Edward, on sport and agriculture, 34 _et seq._

Carted deer, 22

Civilised _versus_ savage life, 132

Clay-pigeons and live pigeons, 166

Colquhoun, John, on the poacher, 81

Compassion taught by Buddha, 29

Compensation, farmers and, 37

Cornfields damaged by mice and sparrows, 40

Coursing, 170

Cricket compared with hunting, 67

Cruel sports not public benefits, 60

Cruelties of stag-hunting, 10

Cruelty, definition of, 2

“Cub-hunting,” barbarities of, 9

Cultivated area of Great Britain, 53

Deer, carted, “accidents” to, 22

Deer-forests: acreage of, 84; effects of, 84

De Quincey’s satire, 142

Dixie, Lady Florence, quoted, 163

Dogs, gamekeepers’, 76

Drag-hunt _versus_ stag-hunt, 162

Drag-hunting a pleasurable sport, 99, 163

Durham, Lord, defends rabbit-coursing, 27

Economics of hunting, 60 _et seq._

Elephants, extermination of, 105

“Enclosure Act,” 71

Eton Beagles, 18; eminent opponents of, 124; hare-hunt, the, 116; sports, brutality of, 117 _et seq._

Evolution and animal kinship, 33

Expenditure on hunting, 65

Explosive bullets, 113

Farmers and compensation, 37

Farmers injured by hunting, 64

_Field, The_, on tame-deer hunting, 24

Fishing, 174

“Food-supply” fallacy, the, 83

Fortescue, Hon. J., quoted, 109

Fox, the hunted, 6, 98

Foxes “made in Germany,” 35

Fox-hunting, 5 _et seq._; excuses for, 8; H. B. M. Watson on, 95; illogical, 97, 98

“Foxology,” Dr. Lang’s, 135

“Game,” animals included as, 71

Gamekeepers: brutality of, 79, 86; Joseph Arch on, 75; Justice Vaughan Williams and, 76; increase of, 39; Mr. Lloyd George on, 39

Game Laws: facts about the, 69 _et seq._; a legal anomaly, 70; _raison d’être_ of, 71; popular dislike of, 72

Grand Duke’s exploit, 103

Gravid animals, hunting of, 158

Greenwood, George, M.P., on cruelty of sport, 1 _et seq._

Grouse-moors and farmers, 38

Hare-hunting, 16; Sir Thomas More on, 16

Hedgehogs as “vermin,” 88

Heron, destruction of the, 41, 90

Home Office, the, and Game Laws, 74

Hudson, W. H., quoted, 87 _et seq._

Hunt, Leigh, quoted, 133, 175

Hunter, the, as a “lover of animals,” 93

Hunting: expensiveness of, 62; a limited recreation, 66; a rich man’s sport, 62

Instincts, “God-planted,” 132

Japanese, prowess of the, 57

Johnston, Sir Harry: on big-game killing, 114; on gun-sportsmen, 93; on wild life, 85

Justice ignored in Game Law administration, 74

Justices of the Peace as game-preservers, 73

Kropotkin’s, Prince, estimate on produce of soil, 53

Land, effect of Game Laws on, 72

Legislation affected by hunting, 67

“Live bait,” cruelty of using, 108

Lloyd, E. B., on destruction of wild life, 85 _et seq._

Londonderry’s, Lord, economic argument, 51

“Lost” animals, sufferings of, 110

“Lust, the blood,” 113

Lyte, Sir H. Maxwell, on Eton barbarities, 117, 126

Martin, Howard, on benefits of sport, 49

Meredith, George, quoted, 94

Mice and cornfields, 40

Modern sport not heroic, 58

Monck, W. H. S., on economics of hunting, 60 _et seq._

Moral defence of sport lacking, 7, 111

Natural _versus_ _un_natural history, 94

Nightingales, destruction of, 89

Nyasaland licences, 114

Otter hunt at Longtown, 30

Otter hunting, 18, 19, 160

Penal servitude for night poaching, 75

Penalties for trespass, 74

Pheasant shooting and vivisection, 1

Pheasants, artificially reared, 13, 36, 51, 94

Pigeon-shooting: not true sport, 21; Lord Randolph Churchill on, 166; prohibited at Hurlingham, 22, 167

Poacher: character of the, 80; the, as gamekeeper, 81; described, 81

Poachers, illegal sentences on, 74

Polo and hunting compared, 67

Preservation of game, 15

Professionalism spoiling sport, 59

Rabbit-coursing, 24

Rabbits, a nuisance to farmers, 39

Recreations: best available to largest numbers, 62; essentials of, 62-64

Remorse of the hunter, 106

Reserves for wild animals, 44

Ribblesdale, Lord, and stag-hunting, 145, 157

Roosevelt, T., quoted, 107

Rousseau, J. J., on compassion, 31, 32

Salt, Henry S., on _Sportsmen’s fallacies_, 130 _et seq._

Sargent, Henry R., defends sport, 45

Schopenhauer and the basis of morality, 31, 32

Select Committee of 1846, 80

Sentimentalism _versus_ humanitarianism, 96

Seton-Karr, H. W., 131

Seton-Karr’s, Sir H., fallacy, 137

Shooting, 11 _et seq._

Small holdings _versus_ sporting interests, 42

Sparrows and cornfields, 40

Spoiling other people’s pleasure, 179

Sport: importance of ethical issues, 1; as a fetish, 4; cost of, 45-59; confusion in the use of the term, 56

Sports: morally unjustifiable if cruel, 2; two kinds of, 3; spurious, 20 _et seq._, 58; and agriculture, Edward Carpenter on, 34 _et seq._

“Sportsman,” a popular appellation, 3

Sportsmen’s claims criticised, 139 _et seq._; logic, 8; fallacies, 130

Stag-hunting, cruelties of, 10

Steel traps, barbarity of, 82

Torture unnecessary, 96

Unmanliness of pheasant-shooting, 57

Unregistered gamekeepers, 80

Unsportsmanlike devices, 104

“Vermin” exterminated by game-preservers, 88

Vivisection and field sports compared, 1

Wallace, A. R., on gamekeepers, 76

War, sport as training for, 149

Warre, Dr., his defence of the Eton hare-hunt, 116, 123

Watson, H. B. Marriott, on fox-hunting, 95 _et seq._

Weasels as “vermin,” 88

Wild life, destruction of, 85 _et seq._

Women and hunting, 11, 19

Woodpecker destroyed by gamekeeper, 89

Wounded victims of sport, 14

Young, need of humane teaching for the, 18

THE END

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.