ON THE RIGHTS OF BEASTS.' llO, 



feels, and from the idea, ill underftood, of their 

 being created merely for the ufe and pur- 

 pofes of man, have the feelings of beafts, their 

 lawful, that is, natural intereits and welfare, 

 been facrificed to his convenience, his cruelty, 

 or his caprice. 



It is but too eafy to demonftrate, by a feries 

 of melancholy facts, that brute creatures are not 

 yet in the contemplation of any people, reck- 

 oned within the fcheme of general juftice; 

 that they reap only the benefit of a partial, 

 and inefficacious kind of compaffion. Yet it 

 is eafy to prove, by analogies drawn from our 

 own, that they alio, have fouls ; and perfeclly 

 confident with reafon, to infer a gradation of 

 intellect, from the fpark which animates the 

 moft minute mortal exiguity, up to the fum of 

 infinite intelligence, or the general foul of the 

 univerfe. By a recurrence to principles, it will 

 appear, that life, intelligence, and feeling, ne- 

 ceffarily implv rights. Juflice, in which are 

 included mercy, or compaffion, obviouily refer 

 to fenfe and feeling. Now is the effence of 

 jufiice divifible? Can there be one kind of 

 juflice for men, and another for brutes? Or is 

 feeling in them a different thing to what it is in 

 ourfelves? Is not a beaft produced by the fame 

 rule, and in the fame order of veneration with 

 ourfelves? Is not his body nourifhed by the fame 

 food, hurt by the fame injuries: his mind actuated 



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