644 '^HE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fundamental to ethics a principle wliich once prevailed univer- 

 sally in politics and still survives in the legal fiction that the king 

 can do no wrong. Louis XIV of France firmly believed himself 

 to be the rightful and absolute owner of the lives and property of 

 his subjects. He held that his rights as monarch were paramount 

 and extinguished theirs, that they possessed nothing too sacred for 

 him, and the leading moralists and statists of his day confirmed 

 him in this extravagant opinion of his royal prerogatives. All the 

 outrages which the mad Czar, Ivan the Terrible, perpetrated on 

 the inhabitants of Novgorod and Moscow, man has felt and for the 

 most part still feels himself justified in inflicting on domestic 

 animals and beasts of venery. 



It is only within the last century that legislators have begun 

 to recognize the claims of brutes to just treatment and to enact 

 laws for their protection. Torturing a beast, if punished at all, 

 was treated solely as an offense against property, like breaking a 

 window, barking a tree, or committing any other act known in 

 Scotch law as " malicious mischief." It was regarded, not as a 

 wrong done to the suffering animal, but as an injury done to its 

 owner, which could be made good by the payment of money. Not 

 until a little more than a hundred years ago was such an act 

 changed from a civil into a criminal offense, for which a simple 

 fine was not deemed a sufficient reparation. It was thus placed in 

 the category of crimes which, like arson, burglary, and murder, 

 are wrongs against society, for Avhich no pecuniary restitution or 

 compensation can make adequate atonement. 



Even this legislative reform is by no means universal. The 

 criminal code of the German Empire still punishes with a fine of 

 not more than fifty thalers any person "who publicly, or in such 

 wise as to excite scandal, maliciously tortures or barbarously mal- 

 treats animals." This sort of cruelty is classified with drawing 

 plans of fortresses, using official stamps and seals, and putting- 

 royal or princely coats of arms on signs without permission, mak- 

 ing noises, which disturb the public peace, and playing games of 

 hazard on the streets or market places. The man is punished, not 

 because he puts the animal to pain, but because his conduct is of- 

 fensive to his fellow-men and wounds their sensibilities. The law 

 sets no limit to his cruelty, provided he may practice it in private. 



Again, in all enactments regulating the transportation of live 

 stock our legislation is still exceedingly defective. The great ma- 

 jority of people have no conception of the unnecessary and almost 

 incredible suffering inflicted by man upon the lower animals in 

 merely conveying them from one place to another in order to meet 

 the demands of the market. It is well known that German ship- 

 pers of sheep to England often lose one third of their consignment 

 by suffocation, owing to overcrowding and imperfect ventilation. 



