As if for gods a dwelling-place,
There man, enamoured of distress,
Should mar it into wilderness.”
I have now briefly considered those blood-sports which are generally spoken of as “legitimate” sports—namely, hunting and shooting. “But,” someone will ask me, “what of hare-hunting, and coursing, and otter-hunting—are not these ‘legitimate’ sports also?”
Well, over these I care not to delay; a few words will suffice for each.
Hare-Hunting and Otter-Hunting.
Well has it been said that
“Poor is the triumph o’er the timid hare.”
It is to my mind indeed a pitiable form of pleasure that men should go forth to hunt to death this, the most timorous of animals. Even in the days of bluff King Hal, when humanitarians were indeed few and far between, and it was hardly recognised that men had any duties to the lower animals, there was found a great and good and enlightened man to raise his voice in protest against this sport. “What greater pleasure is there to be felt,” wrote Sir Thomas More in his “Utopia,” “when a dog followeth a hare than when a dog followeth a dog? For one thing is done in both—that is to say, running, if thou hast pleasure therein. But if the hope of slaughter and the expectation of tearing in pieces the beast doth please thee, thou shouldest rather be moved with pity to see a silly, innocent hare murdered of a dog, the weak of the stronger, the fearful of the fierce, the innocent of the cruel and unmerciful.”
Ought we not to feel some shame if we have not advanced farther than this old teacher of nearly four hundred years ago? But it seems that the age of King George V. has still something to learn from the age of King Henry VIII.