The Romantic poets shared Cowper's belief in the sanctity of nature. Lord Byron attacked fishing as well as hunting in Don Juan (1818-24), and would got out of his way to avoid stepping on an ant. The vegetarian Shelley bought live crayfish from London streetsellers in order to release them into the Thames.

For William Blake, in Auguries Of Innocence (1805), "Each outcry of the hunted hare/ A fibre from the heart does tear." William Wordsworth's anti-hunting poem, Hart-Leap Well (1800), ends with the moral: "Never to blend our pleasure or our pride/ With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.''

The first abolition bill

The growing feeling that cruelty to animals was wrong led Sir William Pulteney, in 1800, to propose the first animal rights legislation - a bill to abolish bull-baiting. During bull-baiting, dogs were set on a chained bull, clamping their teeth into its flesh. In 1878, James Gryce recalled watching the sport as a young boy in Shropshire: "[It was] the most barbarous act I ever saw. It was a young bull and had very little notion of tossing the dogs, which tore his ears and the skin off his face in shreds, and his mournful cries were awful. I was up a tree, and was afraid the earth would open and swallow us all up."

Pulteney's bill was opposed by two cabinet members, William Windham and George Canning, who argued that bull-baiting was no crueller than fox-hunting. It was hypocritical for MPs to ban a sport enjoyed by the poor, while not legislating against their own sport. Canning even claimed that bull-baiting "inspired courage, and produced a nobleness of sentiment and elevation of mind". The bill was defeated. 

The first successful animal rights legislation was the 1822 Act against the Ill-Treatment of Cattle, proposed by Richard "Humanity Dick" Martin (1754-1834). Martin was a leading member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, formed in 1824 (given royal status, by Queen Victoria, in 1840). He campaigned against dog-fighting, bull-baiting and the ill-treatment of cab horses. However, like many members of the society, he was a keen fox-hunter and saw nothing cruel in field sports.

In his Memoirs, William Windham, the leading defender of bull-baiting, wrote, "No-one who condemns bull-baiting can consistently defend fox-hunting." Once bull-baiting was finally banned, in 1835, it was only a matter of time before Windham's argument was used against the fox-hunters.

"The Morality of Field Sports"

In October 1869, the Oxford historian, Professor EA Freeman, published a powerful attack on hunting in the Fortnightly Review. In his article, "The Morality of Field Sports", he wrote: "Either man or beast may be rightly put to death when need so calls for it, but neither in the infliction of death nor at any other time should any pain be inflicted which real need does not call for. The infliction of death should be in the speediest way without any prolonged torture or mockery. Neither pain nor death should be turned into matter of amusement."

Freeman developed Windham's argument, and suggested that fox-hunters "avoided thought" in condemning bull-baiting while not facing up to their own cruelty. He added that hunting could not be defended on the grounds of pesticide, since foxes were artificially preserved by hunters, and even imported into areas of the country where they were scarce.

Trollope defends hunting

Freeman's article sparked off a lively controversy in the pages of the Fortnightly Review. In December, the novelist and devoted fox-hunter, Anthony Trollope, replied with a defence of his sport. He said that fox-hunting was very different from bull-baiting, where the sole object was to watch an animal being tortured: "No man goes out fox-hunting in order that he may receive pleasure from pain inflicted... Windham's argument was altogether false, and not worth a straw."

As to the artificial preservation of foxes, Trollope pointed out that this was a point in the sport's favour. Without hunting, foxes would have long ago become extinct - whereas now the fox was "almost worshipped", surviving so that men and women all over the country could enjoy "a sport which is by them thought to be salutary, noble and beneficial".

This was the beginning of the great fox-hunting debate, which still continues today.