This, then, is the end, and aim, and object of our sport--“the kill”! It is our pride to be “in at the death.” I confess I have often felt no little ashamed of my brother-man--man, that “paragon of animals,” “in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!”--as I have listened to those wild shrieks and yells of “Who-whoop” that proclaim--what? That a little animal has been hunted to its death. And it is this thought from which the thinking man can never escape, and which is to his enjoyment as the canker to the bud--the thought that it is necessary for his pleasure that a poor little animal, in all the agony of terror and exhaustion, should be running for its life before him! And since this is the inevitable concomitant of the sport--even the great and glorious sport of fox-hunting--the thinking man must ask himself, “Am I justified--morally justified--in purchasing my pleasure at such a price?” Can we for a moment doubt what the answer of the thinking man must be? I do not say that all fox-hunters are cruel men; it would be absurd, indeed, to bring such a charge. Many good and humane men--men who would shrink from and abhor anything that they recognised as cruel--are, nevertheless, habitual followers of the hounds. They have persuaded themselves--it is so easy to persuade oneself in accordance with one’s inclination, especially when the object to which one is inclined has all the sanction of custom and long usage--they have persuaded themselves that the sport is justifiable in spite of the suffering which is its necessary accompaniment and result. Or, perhaps, especially if they are young men, they have not thought about it at all. But I cannot help the belief that, as thought and true civilisation advance, it will be recognised that to seek pleasure in the hunting of any animal to its death is unworthy of a thinking and humane man. If the humane man can do these things, it must be because he has not yet become a thinking man. If the thinking man can do them, it must be because he is not a humane man. And this conclusion will, I think, be fortified if we consider, very briefly, some of the arguments by which it is sought to justify sport of this kind. We are frequently told that the fox is a thief and a marauder--a robber of hen-roosts--and that, therefore, he must be destroyed. The simple answer to this is that the fox is carefully preserved; that when foxes are scarce in a hunting country they are imported from elsewhere; and that the man who shoots a fox is held up to odium and scorn as guilty of the heinous crime of “vulpicide.”