428 BREEDING. 



concerning the cruelty which man can practice on his fellow-man, such 

 inhumanity cannot be compared with the torments which are, openly 

 and without a sense of wrong-doing, inflicted upon the dumb existence 

 that cannot plead its wrongs, and which the social code even permits to 

 be maltreated. 



There may be an enactment applicable to extreme cases ; but the most 

 acute anguish no statute touches. • Where the law is operative, death is 

 always near the extremity which mortal justice condescends to relieve. 

 To prevent extraordinary agony, is not to soften the general treatment. 

 No man hitherto has conceived there can be any outrage committed 

 upon charity by breeding from the body which, through a life of service, 

 had earned a right to rest. But most horse proprietors only "throw up" 

 the animal they intend should perpetuate its race, after strains and pains 

 have rendered longer life a larger misery. Work, in this land, appears 

 with quadrupeds to be esteemed a necessary preparation for "the stud." 

 No one in this country, famous throughout the world for its breed of 

 horses, seems to be endowed with any distant conception of the age 

 which fits the body for the reproduction of its kind ; but all appear to 

 imagine the period is any time after the capacity for toil has diminished. 

 What a comment is, by the custom, promulgated upon the Christianity 

 which, after more than eighteen hundred years of doctrine, the inhabit- 

 ants of many places besides Great Britain may point to in illustration of 

 their belief ! 



Bodies crippled by too early labor, or carcasses disabled by disease, 

 are generally found among the breeding stud of a modern establishment. 

 The foals of nearly all breeds are injured before the little creatures see 

 the light; it is, therefore, no matter for surprise that a breeding mare is, 

 by the majority of farmers, esteemed to be a losing concern. In the 

 case of blood stock, both sire and dam are submitted to the trainers' pro- 

 cesses ere the second stage of equine babyhood has been perfected. 

 Certainly where an amusement is pursued with a reckless defiance of 

 economy, a little longer grace might be accorded to the animals employed 

 to promote it ; or where the topmost prize is estimated not by tens but 

 by thousands, it might be prudent to speculate with a little forbearance 

 for such a reward. 



Has it never occurred to a nobleman, or to any gentleman, that it 

 might probably be as profitable to keep the most promising foals sapred 

 to breeding purposes; that, simply as a paying speculation, it might 

 answer to do for the course what agriculturists have done for the land, — 

 only with this difference, that whereas one desires bulk, the other should 

 aim at courage, strength, and speed? Animals, if well cared for, and 

 never placed in the trainers' hands, would in all probability bring forth 



