To the Editor of THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW.
SIR, Mr. Basil Tozer’s article on this subject has much interest for two parties—the sportsmen, whom he so pointedly advises to set their house in order, and the humanitarians, whom he severely describes as “persons who openly dislike sport, or who have ulterior motives for desiring to bring one or more branches of it into disrepute.” As a member of the Humanitarian League, the only society which “openly dislikes sport,” and to whose fifteen-year agitation, culminating in the fall of the Royal Buckhounds, the present interest in the ethics of “blood sports” is mainly due, I ask your permission to say a few words on the humanitarian view of this question.
We of course welcome Mr. Tozer’s comments on such malpractices in sport as the digging out of foxes, especially when effected by the horrible method of the “corkscrew” implement which he exposed; the late hunting of hinds and hares, at a time when many of the victims are heavy with young; the suffering inflicted by inexpert “guns” on the pheasants, grouse, partridges, and other game that are not killed outright; and the widespread torture caused by the steel trap. All these are matters to which (with the exception of the “corkscrew”) we humanitarians have repeatedly drawn attention; but it is more fitting that such evils should be suppressed by sportsmen themselves than by protests from outside. We are well aware that the better class of sportsmen discountenance anything that is regarded as a malpractice, and we have no wish to take unfair advantage of incidental cruelties; but we are entitled to point to such scandals as that which Mr. Tozer has denounced, or the recent worrying of cats by a Master of the Cheriton Otter-Hounds, as at least a sign that indifference to animal suffering is not easily kept within bounds, and that in certain sports the line between practice and malpractice is apt to be overlooked. At that point we leave the subject, with earnest hopes that Mr. Tozer’s plea for reform may be successful.
One or two of his remarks, however, call for a passing word of criticism. “Naturally,” he says, “the question will be asked by humanitarians, Why need foxes be dug out at all?” and he states that while there are several reasons, the chief one is that a certain number of foxes must be killed each year for the protection of the farmers. This argument, in view of the constant importation and preservation of foxes, seems extremely strange! Again, when Mr. Tozer defends trap-shooting in comparison with game-shooting, on the ground that there is a far greater proportion of birds killed dead, he seems to miss the true force of the case against the old Hurlingham pastime. “The idea,” he says, “that trap-shooting is a cruel form of amusement—it can hardly be called sport—is the outcome of a false sentimentality, based upon knowledge of the fact that the pigeons are already in hand before they are placed in the trap, whereas game birds are more or less wild, or have, at any rate, to be searched for.” But what is there of “false sentimentality” in that? It is a perfectly true and just consideration, which takes into account not merely the sum of suffering to the birds, but the demoralising conditions under which the slaughter is carried on. The late Lord Randolph Churchill was hardly a sentimentalist; yet he described a pigeon-shooting scene as “without exception, the most horrible and repulsive sight possible to imagine.”
Concerning otter-hunting, Mr. Tozer has only to say that some of the statements appearing in the Press are “clearly exaggerated”: but this was precisely what was at first said of his own statement about the corkscrewing of foxes, and as he does not specify the exaggerations, his remarks on this subject are quite irrelevant to the issue. Is he aware that in a recent discussion in the Morning Leader, on a case in which an otter was clubbed and killed by a sportsman in a boat, the accuracy of the story was challenged by Mr. L. C. R. Cameron, Mr. Aflalo, and other correspondents, up to the point where it was proved beyond doubt, the fact being elicited that the members of the Hunt had themselves very properly taken action and censured the offender? Mr. Tozer is the last man who should thoughtlessly raise the cry of “exaggeration,” for he knows by experience how a sober truth can for a time be evaded under that term.
Incidentally, I would point out that Mr. Tozer’s idea of the present state of the law for the prevention of cruelty to animals seems rather vague. Speaking of the “corkscrewing” scene, he remarks that “but for the fact that foxes are included in the category of wild animals, the master responsible for the act would undoubtedly have rendered himself liable to prosecution.” True; but so would any master of hounds who carried on any hunting whatsoever! It is only when they are regarded as feræ naturæ that animals may be hunted at all, and this brings us to the core of the present controversy about blood-sports—the fact that some of the species that are legally classed as “wild animals,” do not in any true sense come under that category. The carted stag and the bagged rabbit are not in reality wild animals; yet, because the law absurdly regards them as such, it is impossible, without further legislation, to suppress the degraded sports of stag-hunting and rabbit-coursing. Why did not Mr. Tozer, in his dark hints about the “ulterior motives” and sinister designs of the humanitarians, mention this central and all-important fact? He warns his fellow-sportsmen that their happy-go-lucky ways may involve them in disaster; but really his own references to the intentions of “the anti-sporting section of the public,” hardly justify him in writing as with authority on the subject of which he speaks.
“It seems likely,” he says, “that an organised attempt will soon be made to abolish field sports entirely by Act of Parliament. I know for a fact that several Members of the Legislature are instituting secret inquiries”; and elsewhere he darkly alludes to certain “Parliamentary members who openly desire to introduce a Bill making hunting of all kinds, shooting, and kindred sports, illegal.” Now it may be that, since the abolition of the Royal Buckhounds, Mr. Tozer, like some other sportsmen, has become unduly nervous, or it may be that he regards it as good tactics to exaggerate the designs of the enemy; but certainly the scare which he attempts to raise about this impending legislation is entirely groundless, and transcends the most advanced intentions of the most advanced humanitarian body. Humanitarians are not quite such fools as Mr. Tozer seems to imagine, and they know well that to try to legislate in advance of public opinion, if it were possible to do so, would be to put back their cause for a generation; consequently, however strongly they may feel as to the need of educating public opinion on the general morality of blood-sports, they have not the smallest intention of either gratifying or horrifying Mr. Tozer and his friends by an ill-considered legislative attack on sport as a whole. Reform, in this quarter as in all others, must come by instalment; and seeing that there has been practically no amelioration of our national blood-sports since bull- and bear-baiting were abolished, it is high time that the next instalment were forthcoming—viz., the passing of an Act to give legal protection to such semi-domesticated or captive animals as are turned out from their state of captivity to be hunted, coursed, or shot. This, and this only, is the object of Mr. H. F. Luttrell’s Spurious Sports Bill, which, while not touching any sport which by any stretching of the term can possibly be regarded as “genuine,” would put an end to the worrying of carted deer, the coursing of dazed and helpless rabbits, and the shooting of birds from traps. This measure holds the field as the only one for which the public judgment of to-day is thoroughly ripe and prepared; and it is as certain that humanitarians are not designing any “ulterior” legislation as that they will not rest content with anything less than Mr. Luttrell’s Bill.
This being the case, it is not necessary for me to combat Mr. Tozer’s objections to that imaginary Bill for the entire abolition of blood-sports with which he seeks to scare his fellow-sportsmen from their slumbers; but I must remark, before concluding, that if he thinks to save sport from extinction by the fallacious old recital of the immense sums that are annually expended on hunting and shooting, and the “distress” that would follow the discontinuance of such practices, he is trusting to a broken reed. “These facts [as to the costliness of sport] cannot be disputed,” he tells us—not seeing, apparently, that this tremendous waste of the national resources is itself as scathing a testimony to the folly of blood-sports as could possibly be produced! Let Mr. Tozer consult the nearest economist, and he will soon acquire such information as will deter him from again putting forward this most flimsy of excuses for sport. The real gravamen against all practices wherein pleasure or profit is sought at the cost of the suffering of our fellow-beings, whether human or sub-human, is their cruelty; and this charge cannot successfully be evaded by the cry that “vested interests” are concerned. For the rest of it, we humanitarians thank Mr. Tozer for his outspoken exposure of some very barbarous anomalies of sport, and only regret that he so imperfectly apprehends the reasons why sport itself—and not merely its irregular development—is the subject of a growing uneasiness in the public conscience of to-day.
Henry S. Salt