The Appeal to “Nature.”
The first, perhaps, that demands notice is the frequent appeal to “Nature,” and even (when the hunter happens to be a man of marked piety) to the savage instincts which “the Creator,” it is assumed, has implanted. “Were not otter hounds created to hunt and kill otters?” asked a devout correspondent of the Newcastle Daily Journal. “Therefore,” he continued, “let me ask these persons (the opponents of sport) what right they have to place their own peculiar faddism against the wisdom of the Creator?” In like manner a distinguished hunter of big game, Mr. H. W. Seton-Karr, has defended himself as follows in the Daily Chronicle:
“If a person experiences pleasure in the chase, such as in fox-hunting or deer-stalking, or even in lion-hunting, the rights and wrongs of that natural instinct are a personal matter between that man and his God. That, in common with all carnivorous creatures, we do possess God-planted instincts of the chase is a fact. Why did Almighty God create lions to prey nightly on harmless animals? And should we not, even at the expense of a donkey as a bait, be justified in reducing their number, sacrificing one for the good of many?”
The answer to all this pious verbiage is, of course, very simple. In view of the fact that the sportsman of the present day professes to be civilised, and is at any rate nominally a member of a civilised State, it is quite irrelevant to plead that the propensity to hunt is natural to the savage man. We are continually striving in other departments of life to get rid of ferocious instincts, an inheritance from a savage past, which may or may not be “God-planted,” but are certainly very much out of place in a society which regards itself as humane. Why, then, should it be assumed that an exception is to be made in favour of the hunting instinct? The charge against modern blood-sports is that they are an anachronism, a survival of a barbarous habit into a civilised age; nor can it possibly be any justification of them to show that Nature herself is cruel, for as we do not make savage Nature our exemplar in other respects, there is no reason why we should do so in this. And as for the statement that a man’s treatment of the lower animals is a “personal” affair “between that man and his God,” it can only provoke a smile. For man is a social being, and not even the sportsman, belated barbarian though he may be, can be allowed the privilege of thus evading the responsibility which he owes to his fellow-citizens in a matter affecting the common conscience of the race.
But the wild animals, it is argued, put themselves outside the pale of consideration because they prey on one another. One searches in vain for justice and mercy among the lower animals—such is the strange reason advanced as an excuse for showing no justice or mercy to them.[25] But, in the first place, it is not a fact that these qualities are non-existent in the lower races, where co-operation is as much a law of life as competition; and, secondly, if it were a fact, it would have no bearing whatever on the morality of sport. For why should we base human ethics on animal conduct? Still more, why should we imitate the predatory animals rather than the sociable? And finally, why, because some animals kill for food, should we kill for pleasure? The cruelty of Nature can afford no possible justification for the cruelty of Man, for, as Leigh Hunt wrote in that trenchant couplet which may be commended to the notice of the sportsman—
“That there is pain and evil is no rule
That I should make it greater, like a fool.”
Next we come to the kindred sophism drawn from “the necessity of taking life.” To kill, we are reminded, is unavoidable; for wild animals must be “kept down,” or the balance of Nature would be deranged. That, of course, is undeniable; but, unfortunately for the sportsman’s argument, it is a fact that the breed of foxes, rabbits, pheasants, and other victims of sport, is artificially kept up, not down, in order that there may be plenty of hunting and shooting for the idle classes to amuse themselves with. So far from securing the effective destruction of noxious animals, sport indirectly prevents it; more than that, it causes the killing to be done not only ineffectively, but in the most demoralising way, by making a pastime out of what, if done at all, should be done as a disagreeable duty. But here we must in justice mention a new and ingenious excuse for blood-sports which (to add to its zest) was put forward by a clergyman. It is necessary to take life, he argued, and what is necessary is a duty, and it is right, as far as possible, to make a pleasure of one’s duties, and therefore—but the conclusion is plain! Presumably the reverend gentleman, had he lived a century back, would have found the same pious justification for the practice of making up pleasure parties to see felons hanged.