MORAL RESPONSIBILITY. 195 



in a sense, morally responsible for its misdeeds and properly 

 punishable therefor ; and the best proof of the propriety of 

 this view is the fact that punishment prevents the repetition 

 of the offence, where it is deeded an offence and where the 

 punishment is judicious and proportionate. In other words, 

 the animal can control its propensity to self-enjoyment at 

 the expense of others, can refrain from doing that which is 

 forbidden, that which brings punishment; and it does so 

 refrain, does so control itself under adequate motive the 

 dread of further punishment. 



But the responsibility which in many cases is attached 

 to the dog or other animals, in at least the majority, really 

 pertains to man, to the owner of the animal, who has 

 usually been also its trainer. Many animals commit crimes, 

 and what they know to be crimes voluntarily, at their 

 own instance without instruction from man ; for instance, 

 murder either of their fellows or of man himself. But, un- 

 happily, these instances are rare compared with those other 

 cases in which the animals have received a systematic 

 criminal education from man, whereby they have been trained 

 to become either his accomplices or his substitutes or 

 instruments in crime, or all three, as occasion might require. 

 Sir Walter Scott, the Ettrick Shepherd, Professor Low, and 

 other authors give us the history of various sheep-stealing 

 dogs, some of which suffered for or with their masters 

 the extreme penalty of human law. In such cases the 

 human judges made no allowance apparently for the fact 

 that the poor animals, so convicted and condemned, were 

 morally vicious just because and in proportion as their 

 masters had made them so ; for which reason it would 

 have been only just had all the responsibility been attached 

 to, and all the punishment fallen on, their human instructors 

 to or on those, moreover, who alone had reaped the 

 benefit of the nefarious traffic in which man and dog had 

 been alike engaged. The ' character' and misdeeds of dogs 

 still form a frequent subject of enquiry in all our law courts, 

 but nowadays very properly in reference to their masters' 

 not their own responsibility. 



By the non-prevention of the development of vicious or 



