THE GUN-TAX v. THE PRACTICE OF SHOOTING.
[TO THE EDITOP. OF THE "SPECTATOR]
SIE,—Recent articles and letters in the Spectator have done much to bring home the conviction that the security of this and of every country depends mainly on its riflemen, and that it is more than time we had begun nationally and effec- tively to organise and develop our latent shooting powers. You say that what we now need is 'a conviction among all classes leading to the practice of the art of shooting." Rifle ranges, you point out, of the German kind, sufficient for all practical purposes, may be provided without much difficulty or expense. A most important remark in this connection follows : "In most other clubs for the pursuit of physical
pastime men combine to continue pursuits which they learned as boys" One of your South African correspondents writes : "To suppose that target-shoot- ing alone has made the fine South-African-born farmer such an adept on the veldt is quite to miss the mark." It is not generally known that, for years back, the Transvaal Government has supplied every Transvaal boy with a rifle as soon as he could handle it, and has provided him with ammunition to be used at the target, and on the veldt in the chase. This accounts for the extraordinary number of rifks relative to the adult population that the Boers have sent to the front. I wish to call attention to one marked contrast between this policy and the policy of our House of Commons, and to show the bearing of our policy on the practice you so urgently advocate. A British boy cannot lawfully fire a shot —without exposing himself to prosecution, with fine or imprisonment—unless he has paid the purchase-price of the privilege of carrying a gun,—ten shillings. He may scare vermin with blank cartridge. But what boy would indulge in such gun practice? Not a boy with Celtic or Norse blood in him, not a boy that has in him the making of a soldier. A Volunteer carrying his rifle pays no tax, but volunteering comes after boyhood,—the period of life for acquiring expert- nees in the use of the gun or of any instrument that requires quickness of action rather than strength. The result is evident. The use of firearms by boys and by lads notVolunteers is proscribed under penalty. Lads are debarred from learning at the period of life when learning would afford intense pleasure, the use of a weapon skill in which is essential to our prestige and security. Another evil follows. The boy's inherent love of a weapon of the chase being suppressed, is in danger of becoming extinct, so that in manhood the grea may
be an object not of attraction but of aversion. Tens of thou- sands of shot-guns which thirty years ago were doing nee. ful service in the preparing of recruits for future work, no doubt occasionally knocking over a hare or a pheasant, in clandestine fashion, are now consigned to the lumber-loft and rusting into old iron. The Gun-tax is of comparatively recent imposition, and, if all tales be true, was due to a "fluke" and not to design. Robert Lowe introduced it, in. tending, as was alleged, to cover all kinds of shooting with this tax, expecting that the largely increased number of gun- license holders would far more than compensate for the loss of game-killing licenses. But he reckoned without his host. He was hoist with his own petard. The House of Commons gave him his Gun-tax, but those gentlemen, who naturally dreaded the creating of a vast army of game-killers, insisted that the game-licenses should continue as before. The move- ment on Lowe's part, instead of being progressive and liberalising, assumed a thoroughly reactionary and prohibi- tive character. I submit, Mr. Editor, that one of the first steps that ought to be taken by Parliament towards the creating . of a really national force of sharpshooters is to repeal the Gun-tax Act, and to leave it possible for the boys of poor and rich alike to learn the art of shooting straight. The men that won Agincourt and Flodden with their showers of arrows did not begin the use of the bow when they were enrolled for the field. They had been practising it from their
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