The Sun.
London, England, 1845-09-04 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1845.

The amounts from Gotha, given in another part of
the paper, will be read with painful interest. To the
tanly sports which have long distinguished this country,
such as horse-racing, fox-hunting, grouse-shooting, and
others of a similar character, only few persons raise
any serious objections ; but of that new importation, de-
scribed, too, by a foreign word—the ba ttue—
there is throughout the country almost a uni-
versal abhorrence. The sportsman, if we may use
the term in reference to such an ignoble amusement,
runs no risk, undergoes no fatigue, and the devoted
victims have hardly the slightest chance of escape. It

is regular buttering, and nothing else; and besides,
this so-callei sportsman has not the excuse
the man who is compelled to work at the
trade for his daily bread. While animal food
forms part of human subsistence, some persons
must perform the operation of killing, but, in general,
it is done in the most expeditions manner, and with
as little suffering to the brute creation as possible.
Can the same be said of the newly invented mode
of pheasant shooting, or of the scenes which took
place in the park or forest of Reinhardtsbrunn ? We
-have given two accounts of it ; and we add
a third in a few words from a Contemporary:—" Witbin
two hours at the utmost, somewhere about fifty noble
stags were dispatched—shot down within a fence into
which they had been previously driven :by a whale
legion of chassenrs and beaters—and from which
the wretched creatures had not the slightest chance
of escape. It was a deer battue, and horrible as
are similar proceedings in preserves at home, where
hundreds of pheasants and partridges die in
a foriiiootr to'" make an English holiday," there was
someiliieg still worse about this wholesale slaughter.
Preserves are not fenced in by nets and canvass. Phea-
sants can fly, and hares can run, and both have, at least,
some slender chance of escape, but in the deer battle the
animals were doomed to death with almost as perfect
certainty as are sheep penned up in the pens of Smith-
field." Even this description does not come up to
the truth, for some of the wounded animals made
their escape, and did not meet with that mercy
which is fund in our a battoirs. But we have no
wish, and indeed it is not necessary, to make
one additional remark to paint the cruelty of this un-
manly sport. Let us hope that battues have now
reached their crisis that this painful display
will induce the higher classes, for they alone
are guilty, to adopt other amusements, and that
Englishmen and English women of illustrious birth
will let better examples to the lower classes, to whom
they are bound by their station and superior education
11D become models of refinement and humanity.

Against the Earl of LINCOLN'S " Commons and
Waste Lands Inclosure Bill," it may be remembered
that we repeatedly protested, during its progress through
Parliament, as one of the most wanton and uncalled for
aggressions on the few remaining rights of the poor,
which had, for some sessions past, been proposed to
the Legislature. We commented on the cruelty
of depriving them of those opportunities and
reports for healthful relaxation, and the benefit
of pure air, which form almost the only un-
alloyed enjoyments that a highly artificial condition of
society yet reserves to the children of labour and po-
*arty. Our humble efforts in their cause, and similar
efforts on the part of some of our Contemporaries, were
'tot successful. Upon the last occasion of our resuming
the subject, when the Bill had reached the House
of Lords, we pressed in particular the objection that
its immediate effect would be to create a dangerous in-
cense of Ministerial patronage, by authorising the ap-
pointment of two Chief Commissioners for carrying
its purposes into effect. 'Well knowing how extensively
Oared, thil clauses of Bills of this nature become in
either House, in passing through Committee, we did not,
panful), scrutinise with sufficient rigidness the
wording of some of the clauses ; and among
these that as to the appointments in question.
Nevertheless, we appear to have arrived but at too cor-
rect a conclusion as to the actual results which have
ensued. The patronage has been exercised, and in a
manner to cause, perhaps, one of the most remarkable
phases of electioneering excitement which has been
.._.,,,v-liAttessed in East Busses( for many years past—that is
f;.ss 1i:,.--1 43( hi the sent of Mr. DABS; Member for that di. a
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