104 Notes for the Month. [FEB. 



effort as any effort would be hopeless and visionary to cure. They 

 forget the numbers of men employed in unwholesome and destructive 

 trades : their health and lives sacrificed not possibly, but certainly, 

 not for the necessity, but for the luxury, of those whom chance has placed 

 above them. They forget the deleterious callings of peace; the horrors 

 and the crimes of war ; the thousands left, after a single engagement, upon 

 the field : the other thousands (still more unhappy) mutilated and ruined, 

 who escape from it. They forget that the " whip " of which they so 

 much complain is used and must be used not upon horses only, but 

 upon men. They forget the sacrificed, and wretched females, that crowd 

 and disgrace our streets, and which are admitted to be inseparable from a 

 state of civilized society. They overlook this whole mass of human 

 misery and suffering which it is confessed we cannot cure ; and insist 

 upon being very particular as to the condition of cows and horses ! 



This is hardly reasonable. As the feeling stands, it does no mischief: 

 but, if the law were to intrust it with power, it would do mischief it 

 would become, and speedily, tyrannical and oppressive. Statutes exist, 

 which affix a penalty for wanton cruelty to animals where that can be 

 proved : where distinct proof cannot be given- we cannot take a short 

 cut to justice the crime, like other crimes, must remain unpunished. 

 The Society which we are examining may do something : we wish it 

 could do much, but what it does must be done by influence, not by legis- 

 lation. It must induce persons whose condition in life gives their example 

 weight, to set a pattern of self-denial for the sake of benevolence. To 

 give up hunting and racing ; to travel by slow coaches there will then 

 soon be an end to the rapid ones ; to kill sluggish or vicious horses 

 (where they have such), instead of selling them ; to abstain from 

 visiting exhibitions of dancing dogs or learned pigs j to resist calling to 

 hackney coachmen to " get on," although there is a danger of being late 

 at the opera ; and to eat turkies as they come fresh from the poultry- 

 yard, and veal as it comes from the field, to supersede the ingenious 

 cruelties and inhumanities of " starving," " bleeding," and " cramming." 



In the meantime, as regards the mere affair of the ' ' abattoirs," we repeat, 

 it strikes us that the interference of the Society is ill judged. It can make 

 no difference to the cattle in what places they are killed : and the danger 

 of driving them through the streets of town is greatly overrated. We do 

 not recollect, in the whole of the last twelve months, to have heard of a 

 single accident in London, from the driving of cattle to butcher's shops 

 or slaughter houses ; and, within the last fortnight, four persons have 

 been nearly destroyed in our shows at the theatres ! one man crushed by 

 the falling of some piece of machinery upon his head ; another, in the 

 course of some tumbling trick, flung from the stage into the orchestra ; 

 .and two women at Bath disabled for life dashed almost to pieces by 

 being drawn up in the air with ropes, to represent the " flying ladies" 

 in Peter Wilkins ! The suggestion for transferring the cattle market of 

 London from Smithfield, to the suburbs, and holding two or more 

 markets, instead of one, at the different extremities of the town seems 

 of a different character. This part of the scheme might claim support as 

 a mere matter of local improvement ; and, if no material interests are 

 affected by it, we should be glad to see it carried into execution. 



