America. Analogy teaches us the reason,
both of the sanguinary disposition which
characterises this species, as well as of the
insupportable odour which it exhales, and the
silkiness and strength of its garment of fur.
The blood-drinkers—the Mustelians of learned
language—are the most sanguinary animals
in all creation; because they symbolise
thieves in little and murderers in little—
empoisoners of provisions and adulterators
of drinks—and because the crafty practices
of these meanest of industrials, who sprout
and flourish on the outskirts of civilisation,
cause the death of an infinitely greater number
of persons than the cannon and the
bayonet. The purveyor for the army or
navy, who pares off his profit from the
soldier's ration, and the Director of the
Algerian hospital, who adulterates the sulphate
of quinine, have killed a hundred times as
many soldiers as the Arabs, even since
eighteen hundred and thirty. I rejoice to
learn that nothing of the kind has ever
occurred in provisioning the British fleet.

The polecat and its murderous brethren
owe to the elasticity of their intercostal
cartilages a suppleness of backbone which
allows them to insinuate themselves through
the narrowest chinks of the dovecote and the
poultry-house. An entrance once effected,
the villanous brutes bathe in blood, intoxicate
themselves with murder, and kill right and
left for the mere pleasure of killing. This
supple spine and inextinguishable thirst for
gore represent the insatiable avidity,
profligacy, and astuteness of the usurer, the man
of law, the pleader, and the legist, who creep
through the smallest chinks of the code—
sometimes missing the galleys by the merest
hair's-breadth—to penetrate into hard-working
households, entwine the poor labourer in
their deadly folds, and bleed him till he is as
pale as death. The polecat is pitiless; it
destroys every individual bird which it finds.
Exactly in the same way, the Jew, after
drawing the last drop of gold from the veins
of his victim, will throw him on a straw bed
in prison, regardless of his unhappy family,
whom the detention of their head reduces
to want, and delivers to the terrible suggestions
of hunger. Innocent species—the
pigeon, the hen, the pheasant, the rabbit—
are the usual victims of the polecat's rage.
The weak, the poor city workman, and the
humble farm labourer, are the prey of the
cheat, the parasite, and the usurer. The
remarkable adherence of the hair to the skin,
which constitutes the value of fur, symbolises
the avarice of men of the law, traffickers in
lying words, and dealers in adulterated goods.
Nothing can equal the tenacity with which
these mis-'rables hold their ill-gotten wealth.
The infected odour exhaled by stinkards is
the extortion and stock-jobbing, the assault
and murder, which transude from the gangrened
body of France, where Jewish influence
is paramount.

Would we cure the body social of its
infamies, and exterminate the nuisance from
our territory? The means of both are one
and the same; and, moreover, have the
advantage of being exceedingly easy. To heal
the wounds of society, and exterminate the
polecat, we must substitute fraternity for
selfishness, centralism for divergence,
universal partnership for piece-meal property.
Let us suppress all piece-meal property,
which is the golden-egged hen of chicanery,
mortgage, and usury; witness the subtle
pleader, the sworn interpreter of the code,
and the retail dealer in stamped paper, who
shuts up shop without any warning. Let us
exchange the five hundred miserable huts,
which are the pride and glory of civilised
villages, into one splendid communal palace, a
comfortable club-house for the entire population.
Let us replace the five hundred barns,
covered with thatch, pierced with holes, and
tumbling to pieces, into one vast, united
granary, to receive the produce of the commune,
and over whose inviolability numberless
agents will feel it their office to keep strict
watch. Instantly every one of the noisome
vermin which are the ruin of the labourer—
polecats, rats, weevils, and so on—will
disappear from the world for ever. It is evident
that the question of the polecat, and of the
vampires of parasitism, is identical; that both
these pests have simultaneously invaded the
body social; that they issue from the same
source, antagonism; and that, the cause
ceasing, its necessary effect will also cease.
I await the death of the last surviving polecat
to deliver a triumphant funeral oration
over the grave of the last of thieves.

Now for the fox—a nasty creature, the
object, too, of nasty sport. Fox-hunting is
only excusable as one means of fox destruction.
You English hunt the fox for hunting's
sake; and it is a reproach of which you will
never clear yourselves. Other beasts you
hunt, not for the sport, but to break your
necks and practice horse-dealing. Fox-
hunting affords no interest at all, and hardly
deserves to have a word bestowed upon it.

Young foxes are easily familiarised to the
faces and creatures of the house in which they
are brought up. The part of our institutions
which they most readily fall in with, are our
regular fixed hours for eating. I know no
chronometer that indicates the precise time
of dinner with greater exactness than a fox's
stomach. Tame foxes which had regained
their liberty, have been known after three
months' absence, to return to the farm where
they had lived, and always, observe, at dinner
time.

A long while ago, I was the proprietor
(continued my scientific showman) of a very
young fox, a remarkable wag, who was
capable of beating a commissary-general in
the art of playing tricks with eatables. He
was my own and my school-fellows' great
consolation, during our study of Latin and