25-2 FAULTS INSEPARABLE FROM STABLES. 



Yet, let the bird be captured and immured within such a space. After 

 some time, it will require perseverance to drive the feathered captive 

 from the prison which must make stiff the wings and cause the breast 

 to sorrow. The act, however, will be diflQcult; when accomplished, 

 unless the wire door be closed, the shelter of its inadequate abode will 

 be speedily sought again. Do birds, therefore, love to be caught, and 

 to be caged ? 



Should the above instance not be perfectly satisfactory, another is 

 ready to illustrate the subject. Everybody has heard of the French 

 noble, who had grown old, gray, and feeble while in durance. The 

 gentleman, when released from the Bastile, shed tears, entreating to be 

 restored to his cell. Are we, therefore, to infer that the French love 

 imprisonment? Each case may, perhaps, be interpreted to exemplify 

 the power of habit. One year of sheer animal life will stand against a 

 long term of human existence. A horse lives in the facts which sur- 

 round it. It exists in the present, and has no imagination to embitter 

 the hardness of its fate. Man is always escaping from the circumstances 

 ■which engirt him; ho is always fancying something brighter than h\si 

 present lot, or is straining toward the future ; he may be said to exist 

 most in anticipation. Give humanity no prospect to dwell" upon, deny 

 it all hope to contemplate, the soul sinks into utter dejection ; and a 

 palace or a jail are alike regarded with indifference. 



The horse was, by nature, formed to be the companion and the servant 

 of man. The original of the breed, which in auimals intended for the 

 wild state it is difficult to destroy, is, witli the equine race, unknown. 

 It is, in heart, in body, and in soul, tts obedient servant and willing 

 helpmate of the human race. It does not submit to its doom ; its lot is 

 accepted as a foregone decision ; it has abandoned every thought of lib- 

 erty, and has embraced its fate. But is it worthy of the intelligence to 

 which the creature has devoted its existence, to convert such perfect and 

 entire abnegation of self into a reason for perpetuating those tortures 

 that were invented by barbarity, and are, it is hoped, only continued 

 through ignorance ? The reader needs no prompting to afford the fitting 

 answer. 



This question is not affected by the love or hatred of the animal for 

 the stable. The only point which really remains to be decided is, does 

 the stable, as at present built, represent the most healthful and the most 

 pleasant abode which man's imagination can picture for his tired and 

 submissive companion ? If it be possible to suppose a better home for 

 the quadruped, then it becomes the moral duty of man to raise such a 

 structure. All pretenses about the sacrifice of existing property and the 

 regards for pecuniary outlay are of no weight when urged against a 



