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THE FORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION.
9

years of discretion would play the game, and that, in consequence, it would be entirely relinquished to schoolboys.

Mr. Campbell's counterblast in favour of hacking was not lacking in force, and it may be interesting to reproduce his arguments verbatim.

"Hacking," he said, "was the true football game, and if you looked into the Winchester records you would find that in former years men were so wounded, that two of them were actually carried off the field, and they allowed two others to occupy their places and finish the game. Lately, however, the game had become more civilized than that state of things, which certainly was to a certain extent brutal. As to not liking hacking as at present carried on, he thought they had no business to draw up such a rule at Cambridge, and that it savoured far more of the feelings of those who liked their pipes and grog or schnaps more than the manly game of football. He was of opinion that the reason why they objected to hacking was because too many of the members of the clubs began late in life, and were too old for that spirit of the game which is so fully entered into at the public schools and by public schoolmen in after-life. If you did away with hacking, he foretold that all the courage and pluck of the game would be done away with; and he finally created great amusement by suggesting that he would bring over a lot of Frenchmen, who would beat the exponents of the proposed code with a week's practice."

Mr. Campbell's realistic feature of the delights of hacking, however, did not seem to have any appreciable effect; and, indeed, the rule providing a penalty for its practice was carried by thirteen to four.

Intimation had meanwhile been given by those representing the non-contents that, in the event of the rejection of the principle of hacking the Blackheath party would be