The diversions of the field are usually followed by people, without any consideration, whether they are justifiable, either in the eye of morality or of reason.  Men receive them as the customs of their ancestors, and they are therefore not likely to entertain doubts concerning their propriety.  The laws of the country also sanction them; for we find regulations and qualifications on the subject.  Those also who attend these diversions, are so numerous, and their rank, and station, and character, are often such, that they sanction them again by their example, so that few people think of making any inquiry, how far they are allowable as pursuits.

But though this general thoughtlessness prevails upon this subject, and though many have fallen into these diversions as into the common customs of the world, yet benevolent and religious individuals have not allowed them to pass unnoticed, nor been backward in their censures and reproofs.

It has been matter of astonishment to some, how men, who have the powers of reason, can waste their time in galloping after dogs, in a wild and tumultuous manner, to the detriment often of their neighbours, and to the hazard of their own lives; or how men, who are capable of high intellectual enjoyments, can derive pleasure, so as to join in shouts of triumph, on account of the death of an harmless animal; or how men, who have organic feelings, and who know that other living creatures have the same, can make an amusement of that, which puts brute-animals to pain.

Good poets have spoken the language of enlightened nature upon this subject.  Thomson in his Seasons, introduces the diversions of the field in the following manner.

   “Here the rude clamour of the sportsman’s joy,
   The gun fast-thund’ring, and the winded horn,
   Would tempt the muse to sing the rural game.”

But further on he observes,

   “These are not subjects for the peaceful muse;
   Nor will she stain with such her spotless song;
   Then most delighted, when she social sees
   The whole mix’d animal-creation round. 
   Alive and happy; ’Tis not joy to her
   This falsely cheerful barbarous game of death.”

Cowper, in his task, in speaking in praise of the country, takes occasion to express his disapprobation of one of the diversions in question.

   “They love the country, and none else, who seek
   For their own sake its silence and its shade,
   Delights, which who would leave, that has a heart
   Susceptible of pity, or a mind,
   Cultur’d, and capable of sober thought,
   For all the savage din of the swift pack
   And clamours of the field?  Detested sport
   That owes its pleasures to another’s pain,
   That feeds upon the sobs and dying shrieks
   Of harmless nature, dumb, but yet endued
   With eloquence, that agonies inspire
   Of silent tears, and heart-distending sighs! 
   Vain tears alas! and sighs, that never find
   A corresponding tone in jovial souls!”