Page:Henry Stephens Salt - A Plea for Vegetarianism and Other Essays.pdf/95

Rh all means let the thin end of the wedge be inserted, if the butt end cannot be used for a single crushing blow. But it must be admitted that, from a logical standpoint, Lord Redesdale, and those who voted with him, had decidedly the better of their inconsistent though well-meaning opponents. The fact is that all sport is essentially the same in principle, and one cannot logically and rationally condemn one branch of it without condemning it as a whole. Nothing could have been more feeble than the well-meant argument of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, that pigeon-shooting “did not belong to those sports which were so clear to Englishmen, but to a class of sport which was passing out of use—that of preying on the sufferings of conﬁned animals.” For, first, it may be pertinently inquired, how is it more cruel to prey on the sufferings of a conﬁned than an unconfined animal? And, secondly, even if we admit that it is more cruel, did not the Archbishop himself perpetrate the very same enormity, though not under the name of sport, when he dined that same evening, and preyed on the sufferings of some conﬁned ox or sheep which had suffered at Deptford that