FOOD. 199 



sibility? No man seems capable of interposing a voice of expostula- 

 tion, when the streets display living and feeling flesh creeping toward 

 its early grave ; when he beholds the animal driven slowly to death : 

 when he looks upon an animated being, so worn and so dejected tnat it 

 is the last office of humanity to summon the knacker to end a hopeless 

 misery. The existence of a Society, with two constables, poorly coun- 

 terbalances a national display of spurs and of whips. The foremost 

 humanitarian, so the skin be whole, can afford to gaze upon a lean and 

 spiritless horse, tired beyond man's most exaggerated conception of 

 fatigue, slowly creeping before some over-burdened cart, while the 

 driver, whip in hand, adds his weight to the disproportionate load. 

 Misery in front, brutality behind, and hard-heartedness around ; while 

 a fellow-inhabitant of earth totters onward to its death ! 



Yet, how universal is the lamentation about "the instability of the 

 horse's health," and "the uncertainty of equine life!" Knowing what 

 stables are, and having learned the air, the food, and the exercise 

 allowed to maintain a horse's existence, is there any just occasion for 

 appealing to sympathy, because a life, maltreated in every essential, 

 generally droops before the fate which abuse provoked ? Forced into 

 early toil ; never seen abroad without the goad by its side ; worked to 

 the point of convenience, and nourished according to the dictates of 

 economy, — is it wonderful that the majority of horses joerish before 

 their youth is matured? Is it not rather a justifiable reason for sur- 

 prise that a country should boast of its morality, should exalt its civili- 

 zation, should vaunt its Christian feeling — and, nevertheless, that its 

 inhabitants should tacitly combine to practice the grossest inhumanity 

 upon the meekest type of earthly sensibility ? 



