Alas! e’en in those brighter days We still had Beaks and Blues,-- Still, canting rogues, their mud to fling On self-defence and on the Ring, And fistic arts abuse! And ‘twas such varmint had the power The Champion’s fight to stay, And leave unsettled to this hour The honours of the day!...” Well, never mind about the canting rogues: we have seen Thackeray’s opinion of the men’s chances and the popular opinion. Let us now see what may be said on the other side. A few days afterwards a correspondent, signing himself “Heavy-weight,” wrote to the _Times_ pointing out that Heenan’s behaviour in the thirty-ninth round was fair by the Rules,[3] though the Rules were quite unnecessarily barbaric. He goes on to show that Heenan’s partisans were in the proportion of one to every ten of Sayers’s, and that the American had not been fairly treated. “If,” he says, “the English party, the stronger, had been anxious that the fight should go on, I think the doctrine of probabilities leads us to suppose that it would have gone on; if the American party, the weaker, fearing their man would be beaten, had wished it to be stopped, I think the same doctrine points out to us that their wishes would not, in all probability, have been gratified.” And when we remember that the police first appeared on the outskirts of the crowd, just at a time when Sayers was getting a good deal the worst of it, and a very long time before they finally forced their way to the ring-side, and that they did so just at the moment when Sayers was under Heenan’s arm, we are bound to admit the force of “Heavy-weight’s” contention. It is quite possible that Sayers _would_ have won the fight if it had been allowed to continue, but I don’t fancy that his backers thought so. It is interesting to know that after this battle the editor of _The Times_ received many anonymous contributions to a testimonial for Sayers. The amounts received varied from a shilling’s worth of stamps to notes for £25, and many of the subscribers wrote to say they had never seen a prize-fight, but desired to express their gratification at the splendid courage of the champion in defending the belt. PART II GLOVES CHAPTER I PETER JACKSON AND FRANK SLAVIN It is appropriate to begin the second part of this book, which deals with Boxing in its modern sense, with an account of a fight described by all who saw it as the best ever seen. It took place thirty years ago, and things that happened thirty years ago are apt to be, superlatively, the best or the worst according to the point of the story. There seems to be no doubt, at all events, that the encounter between Frank Slavin and Peter Jackson was the best ever seen at the National Sporting Club.