ON THE RIGHTS OF BEASTS. I4I 



of cruelty, fuch as are, or have been, in his 

 time mod prevalent. It is too true, that the 

 imagination of a man of much fenfibility is per- 

 petually haunted with horrid ideas. Thirty- 

 four years have now paft, fince I faw an infer- 

 nal hag, the houfe-keeper of a boarding-fchool, 

 caufe a miferable rat to be roafled alive over a 

 flow fire, in the prefence of all the boys ; and this, 

 I was then informed by his fon, was the con- 

 flant practice of a certain poft-mafter in the 

 neighbourhood. The doleful cries of the tor- 

 tured animal are, at this inftant, as frefti in my 

 ears, as at the very moment I heard them ; and 

 the impreflion then made upon my young 

 mind was fo forcible, that no time will ever be 

 able to eradicate it, or heal the wound inflicled 

 upon my feelings. A few years afterwards, I 

 heard the following anecdote of a Parfon (the 

 fact, had happened perhaps twenty years be- 

 fore) who, no doubt, for the fake of the faith, 

 would have flretched a fellow-creature upon 

 the rack, and even have drawn the cords him- 

 felf, mould the executioner be too fine mouth- 

 ed, as the chancellor did in the cafe of poor 

 Ann Afkew, in king Harry's days. The wor- 

 thy priefl had loft a chicken, and foon after 

 taking a poor hawk, the fuppofed offender, he 

 put the animal to the torture of a flow and 

 lingering death, for doing his duty, by follow- 

 ing the inftinct. of nature. The poor bird was 



turned 



