FOX-HUNTING
[To the Editor of The SPECTATOR.]
Sni,—Several of your correspondents, while admitting some measure of cruelty in fox-hunting, seek to justify it on the ground that a happy life is a more than sufficient compen- sation for an unpleasant death. Just as Dean Inge has declared that "No one is more interested in the production of bacon than the pig," so some sportsmen claim that, if an intelligent pre-natal fox were asked, "Do you prefer to be or not to be, knowing that your end will be one of terror ? " this hypothetical animal would choose life every time.
Such an argument is specious but absurd. There is obviously no cruelty whatever in preventing the birth of something which is non-existent, but cruelty is inevitable in the chase of any sentient creature until it is utterly exhausted, and then in tearing it to pieces.
Much stress is laid by " Naturalist " and others on the painful alternatives to hunting, but at any rate the agony would not be spread over centuries. As things are, at one moment those who hunt foxes proclaim that they are pests and must be exterminated, and in the next they urge the necessity of their preservation in the interests of the hunt. If it were not for hunting, in five years the fox would have disappeared from this country even as his cousin the wolf has done, nor should it pass the wit of modern man to organize a clean sweep by systematic shooting and netting, without recourse to pnison or the steel traps which every human- itarian, be he sportsman or not, unreservedly condemns.
Even if the considerable sums of money, now spent on hunting, were diverted to other uses, it would not be lost, or hoarded in stockings. Rather would it be diverted to other forms of sport, or to the more fruitful uses of productive labour, and in either case a great industry, which might be far greater, would no longer be crippled at its source. Last year we imported over 221,000,000 of eggs and poultry from countries such as Denmark, where foxes and hunting are both prohibited by law, and the whole of this produce could just as profitably be raised in England, if it were no longer necessary to protect and secure the fowls.
Mr. Colman suggests that the right to ramble and the fact of hunting go hand in hand, because trespassers are discouraged where deer and game are preserved, but unless he or others propose to multiply such preserves when foxes disappear, this contention carries no weight at all.
Indeed, hardly a single argument for honest fox-hunting will stand serious examination except the argument, " 11-e like it, and we mean to continue to find pleasure in this way." but it seems likely that tradition and custom will finally yield to the force of economies and the growing conviction that every pleasure purchased at the price of pain is just a survival of primitive instincts, and unworthy of a humane and civilized people.--I am, Sir, &e.,
Wycliffe College, Stonchouse, Glos.
W. A. SOILY.
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