Public Forum

The London Gazette
December 17th, 1873

From the Editors: Public Forum is offered by the Gazette as an opportunity for community leaders to express their differences in view of the discerning readership. Opinions expressed in the Public Forum are not necessarily indicative of the editorial views of This Paper.

Point:

Miss Eleanor Abernathy, Forsythe Street

The year is eighteen seventy three and we live in an age of culture. But a visitor to our lands would find scant evidence of these facts were he to venture but a day's travel into our fair countryside. For although the civilizing influences of Church and Science have served to transform our city into a virtual paradise, the lands surrounding us remain bedeviled by foul blood rituals practiced by the most barbaric of men. In truth, some of our most prominent citizens engage in these loathsome practices with brutal regularity, taking no care to even disguise their endorsement of the practice.

I speak, of course, of the "sport" known as fox-hunting.

There is scarcely a clear afternoon in the country season when our hills and dales are not filled with the rush of bloodthirsty collies and even more bloodthirsty men, in pursuit of a single defenseless example of God's creatures. In recent years even some of our womenfolk, who ought to be more sensible about such things, have stooped to participate in this farce.

The point is made by those in favor of this ludicrous dance that the farmers who allow their fields to be hunted benefit greatly from the largess of the rich. It is a point not to be taken lightly - our indolent upper classes do so little to aid those of less fortunate circumstances that this transferal of wealth during the hunt season is often the only sort of support that these poor farmers may receive. Yet surely this virtue cannot be held in comparable stature to the blemish brought upon our souls by the commission of these atrocities?

But truly the Lord does show us the way, if we have only the sense to see. For it is possible at once for these overgrown children to enjoy their little games while harming none! Only look around at our city streets, clogged with the most wondrous of mechanical contrivances, and the answer becomes clear. I hereby make use of the Public Forum, so generously provided by the wise editors of the London Gazette, to call upon our most eminent Scientists. Build us a Mechanical Fox, gentlemen! Turn your keen minds and nimble hands to the construction of a device clever enough to outwit thirty drunken fools and their far more cunning dogs! Let the blessings of this age of Science serve to deliver us from blood sports that should have rightly been left behind in the Dark Ages. Thank you.

Counterpoint:

Lord Reginald Cromingswell, Worcester

Rubbish. Unadulterated rubbish. I of course fully support Miss Abernathy's right to spew whatever nonsense might enter her head. But the gentle readers of this fine publication should not allow themselves to succumb to whatever demons of poppycock that have possessed Miss Abernathy.

The sport of fox hunting has a long and noble tradition, evident to any reader of breeding or class. I need not enter into it here, I should hope. It is obvious that Miss Abernathy has never engaged in the thrill of the hunt - the MFH leading the hounds to the chase, the terriers rooting out the quarry, the horns sounding across the plains. These things are England, Madam, as sure as the cliffs of Dover.

So what if the sport is enjoyed largely by we of the upper classes? Do we not deserve our recreations just as well as those whose horizons end at the borders of London? And what of the social and business connections that are made upon the hunting grounds, or at the balls which follow? Without such our high society would not function, and were it to fall then all of England should soon follow.

And as to this notion of some sort of fox-automaton! Ridiculous! It is known to even the most poorly educated of men - and Miss Abernathy may thereby be excused for her gender - that mechanical devices may only simulate living creatures, and then only in limited ways. Perhaps Miss Abernathy has been fooled by viewing a realistic singing canary at one of her tea parties, and has made the unsubstantiated leap that this canary was the equal of a true beast. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I have it on good authority from several gentlemen at my club - many of whom have conversed with Scientists - that a contrivance as clever as even the dullest fox would of necessity encompass the space occupied by the Babbage Engine itself! I suppose the good Miss Abernathy would have us mount our steeds to chase down a steam-driven lorry, lurching across the countryside of England like some wounded elephant. I think not.

In closing, I sincerely hope that Miss Abernathy, and other protesters of her ilk, should in the future confine their ravings to subjects upon which they are qualified to speak, such as, perhaps, needlepoint or flower arranging.