If we may judge by the signs of the times, a similar fate has now overtaken the modern sportsman, who finds to his dismay that his proud vocation no longer goes unchallenged, but that he is compelled to stand on his defence before the force of ethical opinion, and to play the part less of the pursuer than of the pursued. Nowadays it is the humanitarians who, in the intellectual discussion of sport, derive keen enjoyment from the “pleasures of the chase,” and having “broken up” the Royal Buckhounds after a ten years’ run, are hunting the sportsman from cover to cover, from argument to argument. The sportsman, in fact, is now himself standing “at bay”; and it may be worth while to consider what value, if any, attaches to the excuses commonly put forward by him in justification of his favourite pastime. On what moral grounds are we asked to approve, in this twentieth century, such seemingly barbarous practices as the hunting to death of stags, foxes, and hares; the worrying of otters and rabbits; or the shooting of vast numbers of game birds in the battue? The hunted fox, as we know, has many wily resources for throwing his pursuers off the scent. What are the corresponding shifts and wiles of the hunted sportsman?[24] THE APPEAL TO “NATURE.” The first, perhaps, that demands notice is the frequent appeal to “Nature,” and even (when the hunter happens to be a man of marked piety) to the savage instincts which “the Creator,” it is assumed, has implanted. “Were not otter hounds created to hunt and kill otters?” asked a devout correspondent of the _Newcastle Daily Journal_. “Therefore,” he continued, “let me ask these persons (the opponents of sport) what right they have to place their own peculiar faddism against the wisdom of the Creator?” In like manner a distinguished hunter of big game, Mr. H. W. Seton-Karr, has defended himself as follows in the _Daily Chronicle_: “If a person experiences pleasure in the chase, such as in fox-hunting or deer-stalking, or even in lion-hunting, the rights and wrongs of that natural instinct are a personal matter between that man and his God. That, in common with all carnivorous creatures, we do possess God-planted instincts of the chase is a fact. Why did Almighty God create lions to prey nightly on harmless animals? And should we not, even at the expense of a donkey as a bait, be justified in reducing their number, sacrificing one for the good of many?”