We have improved on the “good old days” when we hung transgressors against the law on gibbets by the wayside, awful examples or timely warnings. But the gamekeeper does it still when he gets one of his real or supposed enemies, though I notice that he never gibbets a poaching dog, nor, as a rule, a cat; even the cat may be counted as property. Among some very dry, almost unrecognisable corpses were three new victims – a magpie, a weasel, and a dog stoat. Many plead for the birds, but how many for these bloodthirsty, game-destroying little carnivores? Is the keeper wise in destroying them, and are we wise in allowing him to do it? Never mind the ethics of the question, though many of us have our opinion about the ethics of sport; what about the economic aspect? Many game-preservers give a bounty on all “vermin” captured – that explains the fact that both stoat and weasel have lost their tails, – but they pay nothing on the tails of rats.

Now everyone who knows anything about game-rearing admits that the brown rat is the worst enemy to contend with, and everyone who knows the habits of stoats and weasels realises that they keep down rats. If, I believe, weasels and stoats were allowed to live, the game that they would destroy would be fewer than the game that they would preserve by destroying rats. I cannot prove it by statistics, but in any case the farmer would gain, and it is with the farm crops that most of us are concerned.

The Guardian, 12 February 1926.