1828.] Notes for the Month. 183 



duty immediately to take steps to stop such iniquitous proceedings." Times? 

 April 1, 1827. 



We might go on in the same way to considerable length, if our limits 

 would permit us to do so ; but the above extracts will be sufficient for 

 the purposes of our argument. We repeat that we could wish that all 

 which the society points out should be done; and a portion of it per- 

 haps may be done ; but it cannot be done, we suspect, by legislation. It 

 is impossible to regulate the details of life by law ; much offence of every 

 description must be allowed,, as far as the law is concerned, to pass un- 

 punished. Cruelty, in particular, to the defenceless, whether among the 

 human race, or of the brute creation, can be but very imperfectly re- 

 strained by penal statute. 



The account of the horse killing houses, for example, is painful and 

 afflicting ; but does the society think it possible to make a law which 

 shall compel any persons to give food to horses? Such an object could 

 only be attained at the impracticable price of actual and constant inspec- 

 tion ; and then how very inadequate and partial our best efforts are ! 

 why should we stop at horses ? Why should we not see that the dogs or 

 cats, which perish by hundreds, from hunger, or ill treatment why 

 should we not provide by law that these are fed ? 



In the same way with the paragraph that follows, on the subject of 

 working unsound horses : Who is to decide, when a horse, that can 

 work, shall be allowed to work no longer? into what hands could so 

 dangerous an authority, with any reasonableness, be placed ? The stric- 

 tures upon physiological experiment, we are afraid must be met by the 

 same answer ! " Useless" experiments could only be made by a fiend : 

 but who is to be the judge of what is " useless ?" who shall say whether 

 a given torture at which, right or wrong, the soul recoils ought, or 

 ought not to be inflicted ? And again, the complaint as to " Mrs. Nelson's 

 rapid driving" is most just : but it is by the competition of such people > 

 and by that alone it must be recollected that our national system of pub- 

 lic conveyance has been raised to its present unequalled height of excel- 

 lence and celerity. 



In the meantime, a more conclusive answer still presents itself to the 

 complaints of the Society. Partial justice is injustice ; and it is oppres- 

 sion to cramp the handsior means of the traders in one particular calling, 

 while in twenty others, equal or greater offence against the desires of 

 humanity are permitted, almost without comment, to exist. The society 

 forgets to take notice, when it speaks of the ten minutes' extra suffering, 

 occasioned (perhaps) by a particular proceeding in the death of cattle, of 

 the long account of mutilations and cruelties practised upon them, to 

 improve them for man's use or appetite, while they exist. In complain- 

 ing of the furious running of Mrs. Nelson's coach from Norwich, it 

 forgets the far more furious running patronised by all the land of the 

 race-horses at Newmarket. And the lashes offensive as they are to feel- 

 ing which a hackney coachman inflicts upon an old horse, for the sake 

 of bread, are hardly more unjustifiable than the tortures of " docking/' 

 and " nicking/' and " cropping/' to which a Lord subjects a young one, 

 for the sake only of fashion. 



The memories of these professors of benevolence (we use the term in 

 no contempt) are apt even still farther to betray them. They forget not 

 merely the mass of animal but all the mass of human suffering, which 

 exists as matter of course, under their eyes ; and which they make no 



