EVILS OF MODERN STABLES. 219 



necessarily to subdue the strong. To fetter the creature in whose 

 welfare man has an interest, is evidently a defiance of probabilities, 



THE CHAINS HAVE BEEN SUNDERED. 



though it may not have been intended so to operate when the bonds 

 were secured. The majority of horses can be stayed by a simple show 

 of authority. We see a boy hold an animal from which the strong 

 man has newly dismounted. So also would many a human culprit be 

 secure in the old-fashioned prisons. Jails, however, are not erected 

 with any regard for the passiveness of their inhabitants; but such 

 edifices are built of a strength which may defy the efforts of the reso- 

 lute, and are planned with an intent to counteract the ingenuity of the 

 most cunning. Not so with stables. These edifices are erected to con- 

 fine a creature possessing ten times the strength of any human being. 

 ^ The partitions, however, are of wood, and the bonds usually of rope. 

 Those who are most fluent about the "vices" of the equine race evi- 

 dently never thought upon the possibility of the animal conceiving a 

 wish to escape ; for so very unequal are most stables to their contem- 

 plated uses, that the author has known a horse, in the delirium of 

 agony, kick into ruins the building which, during health, had for years 

 served to confine its huge capability of destruction. 



The stable, however, is essentially a prison ; and so long as it retains 

 that character, it should be of sufficient strength to resist the wildest 

 efforts of the captives. Not being thus, it reflects disgrace on those who 

 put it to uses for which the building is unsuited. The animal, being in 

 bondage, loses all responsibility. Its safe custody is the duty of its 

 self-constituted keepers. It has no trust reposed in it ; and, obviously, 

 can violate no faith. It is held in durance by t^ right of the strong; 

 and if in the struggle which ensues it can prove the strongest, clearly 

 the right which imprisoned it is upturned. 



