fiErf E RS TO TH [TO R.
THE ENGLISH PRESS ON CATTLE-DRIVING.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE 'SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—I see, with extreme regret, that the Spectator joins in the outcry—organised for political purposes—against the supposed " cruelty to animals involved in cattle-driving," and I ask your leave to make a rejoinder to this charge, which, from the context in which you put it, affects me personally. I acknowledge gladly that even without this claim I should haveno doubt of your giving me, as you bare given before, full liberty to express in your columns views uncongenial to yourself.
The present agitation, as you must surely be aware, is directed, not against dairy farmers, but against speculators in dry stock. Cattle-driving means no more than opening gates and driving out young bullocks for a certain distance along the roads. Yhe men doing this use, like ordinary drovers, hazel switches or ash plants, and the cattle suffer very little more inconvenience, if any, than if they were being driven to a fair. It has been proved that earlier in the year when sheep were being driven the lambs were carried, and lame animals were separated from the drove. A fair commentator would, I think, have recognised, and rejoiced to recognise, that never before has an agitation in Ireland been so free of cruelty to dumb beasts. Cattle-maiming has unhappily been a frequent crime,—sometimes, it is true, committed by policemen desirous to obtain promotion by convicting some one else of their horrible act—and no one knows the number of these cases— yet doubtless in the majority of instances the work of peasants in revolt against the law. Cattle-driving hurts not the cattle but the owner. You may say if you like that it is cruel and unjust to the grazier, just as picketing may be termed cruel and unjust to the man who wishes to work. But it cannot honestly be described as cruelty to the cattle.
Yet how are the facts represented to the English public ? I have not seen the letter in the Times which. you refer to, but I have seen a recent cartoon in Punch. This picture represents a ruffianly creature, wearing a crape mask, with a heavy blackthorn in his band, violently belabouring a much-cow. Mr. Birrell, who of course figures, is represented as saying something, and the comment is : "Yes, but how does that help the cow ? " Now this picture is signed by Mr. Linley Sambourne, an artist whose work I respect and admire not only for its brilliancy, but for its high temper. Yet here is Mr. Sambourne using his genius to diffuse a lie, and a malignant lie, broadcast over the world. I have no doubt he deceives himself. Does that excuse him ? He could easily learn that the cattle-drivers do not go masked, that they do not beat the cattle with clubs, and that the cattle driven are not gravid mikh-kine, but dry stock, as well 'able to run as buffaloes. I may be answered that this is the exaggeration of caricature. The spirit that is in that cartoon is not the spirit of caricature as Punch applies it in English, or even in international, politics. It is the spirit which the English Press manifests whenever it is face to face with an Irish agitation,—precisely the same spirit which was mani- fested during the Boer War. Anything is greedily believed and lavishly uttered which goes to discredit—the enemy. The same section of the Press which persistently accused the Boers of using poisoned bullets is now using the term cattle- houghers in reference to the cattle-drivers. Yet every man knows that for a journalist to charge the Boers with using poisoned bullets was to do what is precisely the equivalent of using poisoned bullets in legitimate war.
The Unionist Press has a broad mark. It may represent cattle-driving as organised lawlessness, as an attack on the sanctity of property. These are fair arguments which we have to meet. It may fairly, also, make what political capital it can out of the brutal folly of the men who fired at Mr.
Blake White and his mother coming out of church. But to represent as wanton cruelty to cattle proceedings which have far less of cruelty in them than the employment of animals for drmght is to used ptlisoned bullets. An accusa- tion of this kind bars out the access to political reason by letting loose a flood of unreasoning sentiment; and English sentiment is easily stampeded by a charge of cruelty to dumb beasts,—as the less scrupulous section of the Press knows well.
With the excesses of these papers I should be the last to identify you. Yet here are you constructively imputing to me that I advocate wanton cruelty to animals. Now, Sir, I hate physical cruelty as much as most men ; but it would be, in my judgment, a far less dishonouring offence to beat a dog to death than to impart into a political issue charges of this kind without the most absolute and con- clusive justification of fact. Testimony is so easily manu- factured. There will always be the one man here and there who is cruel in his use of the stick, just as in London or any other town you will see often enough a horse wantonly beaten. There will always be the sentimentalist to say that he (or she) has seen a lot of cattle driven, "and the poor beasts looked so exhausted." There will always be in this case, unhappily, the predisposition to believe which springs from memory of former misdeeds,—misdeeds that in their day were blazoned over Great Britain with every circumstance of exaggeration. All I ask for is clean fighting. If a portion of Scotland or Wales were in revolt against law–,-as the miners have been—you would not catch at an opening to impute inhumanity as well as lawlessness in order to confuse the political judgment of the nation upon the causes which have bred that lawlessness. Yet that is what the Unionist Press in England is doing to-day, and always tends to do when the Irish question becomes acute.—I am, Sir, (to.,
STEPHEN GwINN.
[We have dealt with Mr. Gwynn's letter in our "News of the Week."—En. Spectator.]
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