Not less illusory is the plea so frequently made in sporting journals as a justification of sport, that hunting and shooting “give employment” to a large number of people. “Do these hyper-humane faddists,” asks the _Irish Field_, “ever consider how, by doing away with many of what they are pleased to call spurious sports, they would be taking the actual bread-and-butter out of the mouths of thousands of men and their families? Hunting, shooting, and other sports give employment to such a vast number of people, directly and indirectly, that it would be nothing short of a national calamity if they were discontinued for any cause.” What is really proved by such apologists is that blood-sports are a terrible drain on the resources of the nation, and that millions are annually diverted from productive labour to be employed on the silliest form of luxury--the killing of animals for the mere amusement of rich people. It is the old fallacy of supposing that _all_ expenditure of money, without regard to the nature of the commodities produced, is beneficial to the community at large. Then there is the much-vaunted “manliness” of sport, so important a quality, we are told, in an imperial and military nation. Yet what could be more flagrantly and miserably _un_manly than for a crowd of men to sally forth, in perfect security themselves, armed or mounted, with every advantage of power and skill on their side, to do to death with dogs or guns some poor skulking, terrified little habitant of woodside or hedgerow? This is what Sir Henry Seton-Karr has to say on this point: “Only those who have experienced it can realise the strength of the hunter’s lust to kill the hunted, though they may find it difficult to explain. It is certain that no race of men possess this desire more strongly than the Anglo-Saxons.… Let us take it that in our case this passion is an inherited instinct--which civilisation cannot eradicate--of a virile and dominant race, and that it forms a healthy natural antidote to the enervating refinements of modern life.”[27]