hare in pieces, and fall on it and eat it alive as they do." We reply, no. For though we desire animal food, we must have it in a manner to suit our taste; bears and lions prefer it raw; we choose to have it boiled or roasted. When we wish to have an animal for our table, as we have neither the teeth of bears not the paws of lions, we must use the arms which nature gives, with such auxiliary instruments of art as can supply the defect with most ease to ourselves, and at least expense of pain to the

creature.

The argument founded on the want of vegetable or farinaceous food, in countries which for nine months in the year are covered with ice and snow, is irresistible. But even in more favoured countries, the fruits of the ground cannot be so multiplied as to be adequate to the wants of a numerous population. Even Egypt had seven years of unproductive harvests; and we read in the history of Ireland, that in seasons of dearth the inhabitants of that fertile island have been obliged to take blood from their cattle to save them from famishing. How often have the people of many a district been preserved from a similar fate by the seasonable supply of animal food, brought to them, I might almost say miraculously, as the quails to the Israelites in the wilderness; for certain, providentially, in flights of birds, irruptions of quadrupeds, or shoals of fishes cast upon their shores ? It is a part of the wise economy of nature to supply the deficiency of one kind of her productions by the redundance of another. She seems to act on the principle recommended by the Saviour to the disciples, when they had been fed by a miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes, to "Gather up the fragments, that nothing might be lost." When a bird, a beast, or an insect dies, she suffers it not to be lost; for immediately it becomes the prey of other creatures, which find in it a delicious repast. Thus the atmosphere is preserved from contamination, and the hungry are fed.

The absolute prohibition of animal food would be of little service to the animal creation. Such a prohibition would involve the necessity of cultivating every spot of ground for the production of vegetable nutriment. The

flocks and herds must consequently be deprived of their pasture, and should we not kill or cause them to perish, we must ourselves become the victims of hunger and want. But by no art, in our present state, can we possibly avoid depriving some creatures of life. The Brahmin who supposed that he had lived all his days on rice and vegetables only, was convinced of the contrary when he saw a new world of life rendered visible to him by the microscope. We swallow down thousands of animalcules in our "dinner of herbs," in our common beverage, and in the atmosphere we breathe. The life so destroyed is, perhaps, attended with little or no pain; and as it is unavoidable and irremediable, not being an object of sense, it does not become an object of moral consideration. There is no cruelty, nor even a consciousness of the act in which we are engaged. But we must employ stratagem and violence to gain a superiority over the larger and more ferocious creatures. These, when we master them, we should treat with lenity, and when we find it necessary to put them to death, it should be done with the infliction of no pain which can possibly be avoided. A ball or a dagger sent at once to the seat of life is a merciful dispensation.

It may seem, perhaps, beside the object of this essay, to contend for the use of animal food; but it may not be useless to show, that the author who undertakes to advocate the cause of humanity, is not actuated by any such morbid sensibility or false refinement as would lead him to argue against the lawfulness of taking a creature's life under any circumstances. Conscious that prejudices may be excited, and a good cause injured by carrying it to an extreme, he would discuss the subject on principles sanctioned by Scripture and reason; and while he defends the rights of the inferior animals, would allow to man for his comfortable subsistence, and for the purposes of science, all the latitude of dominion over them which he can justly claim.

CHAPTER V.

MAN'S RIGHT TO HUNTING AND FISHING.

"Take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison."-GEN. xxvii. 3.

If it has been proved, as we think it has, that God has given to man a right to the use of animal food, it follows that all animals being originally in a wild state, they must be taken by such means as man can most successfully employ, by force or stratagem, by the inventions of art, or by such auxiliaries as nature herself suggests and provides. Many species, when taken, can be so tamed and domesticated, as to render the arts by which they were captured, so far at least as they are concerned, no longer necessary; but others are of so wild and ferocious a nature, that their capture cannot be easily effected, nor the captor's safety secured, except by their death. Thus we arrive, by a short argument, at a justification of the practices of hunting and fishing, to which shooting may

be added.

These practices, however, are reckoned by many friends of humanity as altogether inconsistent with the character of Christian benevolence. They regard such sports as exceedingly cruel, and think them indefensible by any sound principle of religion or philosophy. Our sentimental poets, particularly, speak of the chase with unqualified abhorrence. Thus Thomson, in such exaggerated terms as poetry may justify and admire, reprobates

He says,

"the steady tyrant, man,

Who, with the thoughtless insolence of power,
Inflamed beyond the most infuriate wrath

Of the worst monster that e'er roamed the waste,
For sport alone pursues the cruel chase."

"Poor is the triumph o'er the timid hare!"

and sympathizes deeply in her perplexities when she is pursued by the hounds. He is also distressed for the hunted stag, when

"he stands at bay,

And puts his last weak refuge in despair.

The big round tears run down his dappled face;
He groans in anguish, while the prowling pack
Blood-happy, hang at his fair jutting chest,

And mark his beauteous chequered sides with gore.

He justifies, however, the chase of the "roused-up lion," with the grim wolf, and says, when

"The brindled boar

Grins fell destruction, to the monster's heart
Let the dart lighten from the nervous arm."

But as there are no lions, wolves, nor wild boars in Great Britain, he admonishes the British youth to indulge their cynegetic propensities in the fox-chase, which he describes

Pour all your speed into the rapid game;

For happy he who tops the wheeling chase;
Has every maze evolved and every guile
Disclosed; who knows the merits of the pack;

Who saw the villain seized, and dying hard,

Without complaint, though by an hundred mouths
Relentless torn."

Now there seems no good reason why a poet should be lacrymose for the death of a hare, and triumphant with joy at the laniation of a fox. The one is as much an object of compassion as the other, and has as many virtues to give him a claim to respect. The fox is one of the most beautifully formed quadrupeds, and he is distinguished above all animals for his ingenuity, and the number and variety of his resources; and when he is pursued by the hounds, and his fate becomes inevitable, he" dies hard," that is, with a fortitude which entitles him to the commendation of the brave. But in his tastes he is too recherché; like many of the unfeathered biped race, he is a gourmand, and delights, when rabbits are scarce, to dine and sup on poultry; and because he follows

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the instinct of his nature, in taking a chicken or gosling for his repast, he is stigmatized as a robber," and a villain," and it is deemed a subject of exultation to see him "by a hundred mouths relentless torn!"

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Hare-hunting is reprobated by Cowper as a

"detested sport,

That owes its pleasure to another's pain,
That feeds upon the sobs and dying shrieks

Of harmless nature."

It

It would be an easy matter thus to become sentimental with the gentle and amiable poet. But we are discussing an important subject, not in the spirit of poetry but of philosophy-as a friend also to humanity, and though. having no partiality or fondness for the chace in any form, yet constrained to believe that there is such a provision made for it by an all-wise Providence in the constitution of man, the instinct of hounds, and even in the stratagems and fleetness of the hare herself, who may often have a gratification in eluding or out-stripping her pursuers, as to afford some justification of the practice.* has been strongly argued that the great propensity to field sports, which operates on many like an uncontrollable instinct, is a sure indication of the intention of the Deity not only to permit, but to stimulate to those pursuits. And here, as in all things else, we may discern wisdom and goodness. Such pleasure is annexed to the quest of game, as enables the sportsman to endure hunger and fatigue the winter's storms and the summer's heats; to explore the passes of Alpine glaciers, and scale the regions of eternal snow; to mount to the long hidden source of rivers; to penetrate deep forests, and make discoveries in regions hitherto unknown, studio fallente laborem.

To man in a savage or semi-barbarous state the capture

*"The hare," says Beckford, p. 138, "is a little timorous animal, and we cannot help feeling some compassion at the very time we are pursuing her to destruction: we should give scope to all her little tricks, and not kill her forcibly and over matched. Instinct instructs her to make a good defence when not unfairly treated, and I will venture to say, that as far as her own safety is concerned, she has more cunning than the fox, and makes many shifts to save her life far beyond all his artifice. Without doubt you have often heard of some, who from the miraculous escapes they have made have been thought witches; but I believe you have never heard of a fox that had cunning enough to be thought a wizard."

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