[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR, I am not a Foxhunter and have never ridden to hounds. Indeed I have never ridden a horse. But I have yet to meet the Anti-Fox hunter who will meet unflinchingly the following point.
Were foxhunting to be abolished it is certain that, within a generation, wild foxes would be as extinct in Great Britain as wolves are.
Now let us try for a moment to look at things from a fox's standpoint. Is it better to have lived and loved, with a possi- bility, or probability, of dying at the end of a hunt, or never to have lived at all ?
suspect the fox has many a rousing chase after fowls, rabbits and pheasants and many a jolly, luscious midnight supper with his wife and family in their dry, snug home deep in the earth. And I suspect that most foxes have given a foxy chuckle at the thought of the way they have defeated those stupid, bloodthirsty hounds by this or that manoeuvre.
In short, to revert to the point of view of a reader of The Spectator, I suspect that the Anti-Hunt people, like certain French politicians, to whom Europe mainly owes its present distresses, desire more security than life will grant.—Yours
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