Cruelty and Humour
that Andrew Lang watched the shrivelling of that "full-blown comic sense" which accompanied the cruel sports of an earlier generation, the bull-baiting and badger-drawing and cock-fights and prize-fights which Englishmen loved, and which taught them to value courage and look unmoved on pain. In 1699 the old East India Company lost its claim against the New Company by two parliamentary votes; and this measure was passed in the absence of friendly members who had been seduced from their posts by the unwonted spectacle of a tiger-baiting. In 1818 Christopher North (black be his memory!) described graphically and with smothered glee the ignoble game of cat-worrying, which ran counter to British sporting instincts, to the roughly interpreted fair play which severed brutality from baseness. There was never a time when some English voice was not raised to protest against that combination of cruelty and
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