"Both must be abolished," Mr. Octavius Quirk continued, with windy
vehemence. "The very distinction that takes any animal _ferae
naturae_ and constitutes it game is a relic of class privilege and
must go--"
"Then Irish landlords will no longer be considered _ferae naturae_?"
Mangan asked, incidentally.
"We must be free from these feudal tyrannies, these mediaeval chains and
manacles that the Norman kings imposed on a conquered people. We must be
as free as the United States of America--"
"America!" Mangan said; and he was rude enough to laugh. "The State of
New York has more stringent game-laws than any European country that I
know of; and why not? They wanted to preserve certain wild animals, for
the general good; and they took the only possible way."
Quirk was disconcerted only for a moment; presently he had resumed, in
his reckless, _mouton-enrage_ fashion,
"That may be; but the Democracy of Great Britain has pronounced against
game; and game must go; there is no disputing the fact. Hunting in any
civilized community is a relic of barbarism; it is worse in this
country--it is an infringement of the natural rights of the tiller of
the soil.
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