Fox-Hunting.
Now, fox-hunting seems to most of us almost a part of the British Constitution. It takes rank among the best-established of our time-honoured institutions. What would become of the glory of England, were it not for fox-hunting? And speaking as one who in days gone by was, so far as time and opportunity and a shallow purse allowed, a votary of the chase, I can honestly say that the sport has more to say for itself than some who have never fallen under the sway of its fascination are able to realise or understand. Let us see what can be said for it.
Great and undeniable are the pleasures of the meet; great the delights of the country-side as the hounds are thrown joyfully into cover, with a burst of melodious chiding. What a picturesque sight! The busy, eager, indefatigable pack; gallant steeds impatient for the coming race, and scarlet coats lighting up the wintry woodland scene! Then the excitement of the “find”; the still greater excitement of the cry, “Gone away! gone away!” hounds in full cry, and the cheery blasts of the huntsman’s horn to rally the stragglers in the rear!
And if there be anything at all which can in any way justify the high-sounding title of “the noble science,” we may look for it now. For the man who can ride straight to hounds and hold his own over a stiff country must possess some qualities which are not to be despised. He must not only be a fine horseman—and fine horsemen are few and far between—but he must know how to combine courage with judgment, prompt decision with sound discretion. Here for the good rider, whose heart is in the right place, are the true pleasures of the chase.
But let us now look at the other side of the picture. It has been a splendid run, but the end approaches. The fox has been viewed dead-beat, painfully crawling into a hedgerow, with coat muddy and staring, tongue hanging out of his mouth, brush trailing on the ground. What sight more piteous can be conceived? A few minutes more and his merciless pursuers are upon him; and, to use the words of Whyte Melville, the Laureate of the chase,
“’Twas a stout hill-fox when we found him, but now
’Tis a thousand tatters of brown!”
This, then, is the end, and aim, and object of our sport—“the kill”! It is our pride to be “in at the death.” I confess I have often felt no little ashamed of my brother-man—man, that “paragon of animals,” “in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!”—as I have listened to those wild shrieks and yells of “Who-whoop” that proclaim—what? That a little animal has been hunted to its death. And it is this thought from which the thinking man can never escape, and which is to his enjoyment as the canker to the bud—the thought that it is necessary for his pleasure that a poor little animal, in all the agony of terror and exhaustion, should be running for its life before him! And since this is the inevitable concomitant of the sport—even the great and glorious sport of fox-hunting—the thinking man must ask himself, “Am I justified—morally justified—in purchasing my pleasure at such a price?” Can we for a moment doubt what the answer of the thinking man must be? I do not say that all fox-hunters are cruel men; it would be absurd, indeed, to bring such a charge. Many good and humane men—men who would shrink from and abhor anything that they recognised as cruel—are, nevertheless, habitual followers of the hounds. They have persuaded themselves—it is so easy to persuade oneself in accordance with one’s inclination, especially when the object to which one is inclined has all the sanction of custom and long usage—they have persuaded themselves that the sport is justifiable in spite of the suffering which is its necessary accompaniment and result. Or, perhaps, especially if they are young men, they have not thought about it at all. But I cannot help the belief that, as thought and true civilisation advance, it will be recognised that to seek pleasure in the hunting of any animal to its death is unworthy of a thinking and humane man. If the humane man can do these things, it must be because he has not yet become a thinking man. If the thinking man can do them, it must be because he is not a humane man.
And this conclusion will, I think, be fortified if we consider, very briefly, some of the arguments by which it is sought to justify sport of this kind. We are frequently told that the fox is a thief and a marauder—a robber of hen-roosts—and that, therefore, he must be destroyed. The simple answer to this is that the fox is carefully preserved; that when foxes are scarce in a hunting country they are imported from elsewhere; and that the man who shoots a fox is held up to odium and scorn as guilty of the heinous crime of “vulpicide.”
But we have no sooner answered this flimsy argument than we are met by another of a quite different character. We are told that if foxes were not preserved to be hunted they would be exterminated; and that a fox, if given his choice, would much prefer to take his chance of escaping the hounds to the alternative of extermination. This is certainly a quaint specimen of the sportsman’s logic. We are asked, in the first place, to assume an impossibility—namely, that a fox should be endowed with reason to enable him to consider and come to a decision upon the suggested question; secondly, we have to assume what his answer would be; thirdly, that that answer would be a wise one for the foxes; and, fourthly, that man ought to be bound by it. To this puerile argument it is sufficient to say that the question before us is not what a fox might, in an imaginary and impossible contingency, conceivably think best for himself, but what is right for man to do. If, therefore, the alternative be between the extermination of foxes, by methods as painless as may be, and their preservation to be hunted by man, I cannot doubt in what direction the true interests of humanity will be found to lie.
To this conclusion, then, I think our reason must inevitably lead us, even with regard to the best and most popular of blood-sports as practised in this country. I do not hesitate to confess that I was brought to it with reluctance, knowing full well the pleasures of riding over a country with hounds in front and a good horse under me. But, in truth, the case seems too clear for argument. On one side are inclination and pleasure, and prescription, and the false glamour of “sport”; on the other side are “that incomparable pair”—humanity and reason.[2]