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CHAPTER X. 



DOGS. 



The Thirty-ninth General Assembly of Tennessee enacted 

 a dog law, greatly to the relief and satisfaction of the sheep- 

 raisers throughout the State. Many farmers who had hith- 

 erto been deterred from raising sheep, soon engaged in the 

 enterprise, and many more were preparing to do so, but be- 

 fore the good effects of the law were scarcely realized, the 

 following Legislature (the 40th) repealed the law. It seems 

 not a little extraordinary that two Legislatures, following 

 each other so closely giving them credit for an equal 

 amount of intelligence and patriotism should differ so 

 widely in their appreciation of what constituted the true 

 interests and wishes of their constituents. Both could not 

 be right. We have the proof positive, through the answers 

 received to the circulars issued by this department to all the 

 principal sheep- raisers of the State, that they for whose 

 benefit and protection the law was enacted regarded it as 

 most salutary and beneficial. Why then repeal it? How 

 did the members of the 40th General Assembly discover 

 that the law was unpopular or not beneficial? The ques- 

 tion resolves itself into this: Whether the hundreds of 

 thousands of useless curs in the State shall be suffered to 

 roam at large, to the injury and destruction of the property 

 of others, or whether they shall be put under some restraint 

 and control, that one of the most important industries of 

 the State I had almost said, the most important might 

 thrive and prosper? 



The following table shows the salutary effect of the law 

 during the short time it was in operation : 



