NEW MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
CERTAIN royal persons have from time to time been attacked for exhibiting a coarse taste in rude sports ; but the propensity seems without exception to belong to the class rather than the individual. Pleasure in slaughtering the unoffending denizens of the forest by wholesale is not more largely shared by the royal society of Britain than by that of Germany ; delight in butchery is not more conspicuous at Gotha than at Pampeluna; and the old Princes of the German Empire are not more imbued with the taste than the parvenu French Princes of the Barricades. A common taste, in such different circumstances, denotes some com- mon influence producing it ; and whether it arises from a pam- pered will, from those restraints that fetter the indulgence of emotion and make any contemplation of natural passion agreeable, or from whatever more direct cause, there is evidently some de- fect in the training that permits it to exist.
It is true that the royal classes do not stand quite alone in any country in the enjoyment of the bloody sports peculiar to that country : in England, the royal battue-shooters are countenanced by others ; it is so in Gotha ; and in Spain, bull-fights are a na- tional as well as royal pastime. But the royal classes do stand almost alone in a wholesale, undiscriminating, gulping taste for all cruel sports ; or at least share that taste with the prize-fighting and some other not numerous classes of the kind called " black- guard." A plebeian foreigner will sicken at the massacre of poultry, of deer, or of bulls and horses, to which his national habits have not inured him ; but the royal foreigner has stomach for it all.
This insensibility, we say, indicates a defect of education ; and the defect, of course, ought to be supplied. Here is an exalted object for redundant British benevolence. We send out mis- sionaries to civilize the aborigines of New Zealand or Australia ; why not establish a society to civilize the royal classes 2—to be called, for instance, " The British and Foreign Association for the better Education and Civilization of the Royal Population of all Nations." We might begin with a " home mission" ; but in a short time, no doubt, with the help of a little spiritual intimi- dation, the Foreign Office might be induced to force upon foreign countries treaties to abolish brutalizing sports among the royal classes ; for the Foreign Office can be persuaded to almost any- thing in that way. Foreign countries, indeed, might be disgusted at our pragma- tical interference : but think of the virtuous objects. Foreign countries, too, might retort, that our own royal classes need amend- ment, just as they say, when we exhort to the total abolition of slavery, that we still have slavery in our own India : but the "Association," &c. may leave the Foreign Office to cloak that difficulty in some diplomatic twaddle ; and may we not hope to obtain a " right of search "—free admission for our Metropolitan Policemen, parish beadles, and officers of societies for the suppres- sion of vice, into royal Founds and popular amphitheatres, to spy out the sins of our neighbours? If it had no other effect, such an organization would at least procure for us some very exciting " annual reports" on the dying agonies of deer-herds, or the ex- enteration of horses and torturing. of bulls. France would fume at "perfide Albion"; but we should feel very censorious and praiseworthy.
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