[8] See the “Report of the Land Enquiry Committee,” vol. i., 1913, which in its chapter on “Game” contains a severe condemnation of the practice of excessive game preserving. “The damage done by game is too serious to be overlooked. Even when the tenant farmer is fully compensated the damage amounts to a national loss.… Not merely is land under-cultivated, but large areas are altogether out of cultivation owing to the preservation of game. This land, instead of providing food for the people, provides sport and delicacies for the few, and is the source of much damage and annoyance to neighbouring farmers.” THE COST OF SPORT BY MAURICE ADAMS “Now Dives daily feasted and was gorgeously arrayed, Not at all because he liked it, but because ’twas good for trade; That the people might have calico, he clothed himself in silk, And surfeited himself on cream, that they might get the milk; He fed five hundred servants, that the poor might not lack bread, And had his vessels made of gold that they might get more lead: And e’en to show his sympathy with the deserving poor, He did no useful work himself that they might do the more.” ERNEST BILTON. In a tract entitled “Sport, A National Benefactor,” dedicated to the sportsmen of the nation, Mr. Henry R. Sargent gives elaborate statistics to prove that large sums of money are devoted to the maintenance of sport, while about £25,000,000 are annually spent upon it. Of this amount he estimates that wages absorb some £6,000,000. Rents of shootings and fishings, and the price of race-horses, come to £5,500,000, which sum, though “going principally to the upper classes, is recirculated in various ways,” while, “except the few pounds paid for dead horses, we have from hunting, shooting, and racing, over £6,000,000 a year paid for oats, meal, hay, straw, beans, and bran; and let it be understood that it is all British produce. No infernal foreign stuff is given to our hounds or horses, though we may eat it ourselves, and thus encourage Free Trade--that curse of our country.”