In like manner Lord Ribblesdale, when defending stag-hunting in his book on “The Queen’s Hounds,” expressed the sportsman’s case as follows: “Most people will agree that conclusions founded on practice must always have a slight pull when placed in the scales with conclusions based upon theory, hearsay, or conjecture--even granting the fullest credit for sincerity and _bona fides_ to the opponents of stag-hunting.” Now, it is, of course, absurd to represent the ethical objections to sport as “based upon theory, hearsay, or conjecture,” for the methods of sportsmen are well known and beyond dispute, and many of those who most strongly condemn such practices have been sportsmen themselves and are thoroughly conversant with the facts. But what I wish to point out is that Lord Ribblesdale’s description of the sportsman’s defence of sport as “a conclusion founded on practice” might be just as logically applied to the criminal’s defence of crime. To invoke the judgment of an expert on the morality of a practice in which he is professionally interested is an error similar to that of setting the cat to watch the cream. On the whole, it is not surprising that the sportsman who can devise no cleverer modes of escape from his humanitarian pursuers than the sophisms above mentioned is already being brought to bay, and stands in imminent danger of being, controversially, “broken up.” Indeed, considering the nature of the arguments adduced in its favour, one is inclined to think that sport must be not only cruel to the victims of the chase, but ruinous to the mental capacity of the gentlemen who indulge in it. It can hardly be doubted that the ludicrous aspect of modern sport will more and more present itself to those who possess the sense of humour; and we may even hope that the poverty-stricken caricaturists of our comic papers will some day relinquish their threadbare jokes over the blunders of the hunting-field and the shooting-box, to discover that the subject of sport is rich in another kind of comedy--the essential silliness of the habit itself, and the crass absurdity of the arguments put forward by its apologists. FOOTNOTES: [24] Some of these fallacies have been incidentally referred to in preceding chapters, but it is convenient, at the expense of a little overlapping, that they should here be treated together. [25] _Blackwood’s Magazine_, August, 1899.