I have observed that the controversy as to whether sparrows are blessings or otherwise to the farmer, and whether, in these days of bad harvests, when almost every grain of corn is precious, the little birds should be encouraged or exterminated, is one that is regularly revived.
All the poets have formally denounced the sparrow, “the meanest of the feathered race,” and how shall any one be found to speak well of him? The best that can be said in the defence of the familiar little fowl is very bad indeed, for no criminal code that yet exists would suffice to exhaust the calendar of his crimes and convict him for all his offences. Not only does the sparrow despise police regulations and make sport of by-laws, but he affronts all our standards of ethics, public morality, and religion. In a church he behaves with no more decorum than in a court of justice, and whether in the pulpit or the dock betrays an unseemly levity that will require the utmost extension of the Arminian doctrines of universal grace to compass his salvation. He is the street boy among birds, and his affronts are gratuitous and unprovoked. It is of no use to retort upon him, or threaten him with the law. The water-pipe suffices as an answer to every repartee, be it a gibe or a menace; and when a sparrow has hopped up a long spout, who would care to bandy arguments with him? Impervious to the battery of exhortation, he perches on the window-sill, invulnerable to the most formidable assaults of reason or the most ferocious onsets of sarcasm, and thoroughly comprehends upon which side of the glass he sits. Pelt him with hard names, and he only chirps monotonously; but if you throw a stone at him, you must pay for the damages.
