The case is even worse when the quarry is to all intents and purposes domesticated, an animal wild by nature, but by force of circumstances and surroundings tame. Such are the park deer, the victims of the sportsmen who persist in carrying on the carted stag hunt, in spite of the abolition of the Royal Buckhounds in 1901. There is urgent need that the laws which relate to the humane treatment of animals should be amended, or more wisely interpreted, on this particular point, so as to afford immediate protection to these domesticated stags, whose torture, under the name and sanction of “sport,” has been long condemned by the public conscience. Bear-baiting and cock-fighting have now been abolished by legal enactment, and it is high time that the equally demoralizing sport of hunting of tame stags should be relegated to the same category.[35] The same must be said of some sports which are practised by the English working man--rabbit-coursing, in particular, that half-holiday diversion which is so popular in many villages of the North. An attempt is often made by the apologists of amateur butchery to play off one class against another in the discussion of this question. They protest, on the one hand, against any interference with aristocratic sport, on the plea that working men are no less addicted to such pastimes; and, on the other hand, a cry is raised against the unfairness of restricting the amusements of the poor, while noble lords and ladies are permitted to hunt the carted stag with impunity. The obvious answer to these quibbling excuses is that _all_ such barbarities, whether practised by rich or poor, are alike condemned by any conceivable principle of justice and humaneness; and, further, that it is a doubtful compliment to working men to suggest that they have nothing better to do in their spare hours than to torture defenceless rabbits. It was long ago remarked by Martin, the author of the famous Act of 1822, that such an argument indicates at bottom a contempt rather than regard for the working-classes; it is as much as to say, “Poor creatures, let them alone--they have few amusements--let them enjoy them.”