“I have enquired of my servants at this place, relative to the copy of the printed letters which you had the goodness to send me, and cannot obtain any tidings of their being received. I should therefore feel much obliged by your transmitting me, at your leisure, another copy; if by chance the number which you have retained may enable you to do so with convenience.
“I read with regret, and I may say surprise, your article
in your paper of yesterday,
relative to ——. With regard to the dog-fight, I learned from
several persons present that the latter part of the fight, which was the only
part that partook of cruelty, was in no way attributable to ——, as
though his dog was thought likely to beat his antagonist, he repeatedly offered
to give up all the money he had depending, if
| 172 | FIFTY YEARS’ RECOLLECTIONS, |
“With regard to his shooting over the manor of W—— on Sunday se’enight, I learn that the real fact was that being at sea, in consequence of a gentleman with him being indisposed, he landed with a gun for an hour or two, shot two or three rabbits, and returned to the vessel.
“I certainly think that when a gentleman of fortune comes upon the public service, and at some considerable sacrifice of his own personal ease and convenience into this distant country, it is a little ungracious in any local journalist so to misrepresent his actions, and I must think it still more so, when I find it is the question of an individual whose singular case has attracted so much of the general sympathy, and likewise when I find the ground, on which part of this attack is made, is so little tenable, as the anxiety for an equal operation of the laws on the higher and lower orders of society, it being notorious with respect to the matter in question, in the second part of the paragraph; that those of an inferior condition are, particularly in winter time, in the constant habit of carrying guns on Sundays, and that the higher orders scarcely ever do so.
“As to the more serious part of your paragraph, that
which by insinuation charges this gentleman with the odious offence of cruelty
to animals, I can only say that I never heard of such practices, and do not
credit them. I am willing to believe that before you permitted yourself to
circulate such imputations, you minutely satisfied yourself with the evidence
on which, in your view, such serious charges could be substan-
| LITERARY AND PERSONAL. | 173 |
