Overloading a Horse (concluded^. 



him, as it would be, knowing only the size or weight of a man, 

 and nothing of his age, health, strength, toughness, or bodily 

 condition, to establish what is or is not an overload for him. 



" How, then, are we to determine when a horse is overloaded? 

 Just exactly and precisely as we determine when a man is over- 

 loaded. First, -we are to take his own evidence. If a man stops 

 and says, ' I am overloaded, I am working too hard, I feel that 

 the task put upon me is too heavy,' that is evidence. So when 

 the horse, ordinarily kind and willing to pull, comes with a 

 heavy load to a rise of land and, after one or two efforts, stops 

 and says, as plainly as words can speak it, ' I am overloaded, I 

 am working too hard, I feel that the task put upon me '. too 

 heavy,' that is evidence; and there is no court or jury, oi man 

 with the heart of a man, who will not recognize it as such. Be- 

 sides, the signs of overwork are just as visible in the hor \ as 

 the man. No magistrate or juror would have any difficui y in 

 deciding in his own mind whether a case to which his attention 

 might be attracted in our public streets was or was not a case of 

 cruelty. 



"Is not, then, the testimony of competent, intelligent, and 

 credible bystanders, who see how the horse looks and acts, and 

 his bodily condition, health, and capability to perform the labor 

 required, the best evidence that can possibly be obtained? 

 Where can you get better? And when disinterested and intel- 

 ligent witnesses, who are present and see and hear all that is 

 said and done in a given case, voluntarily leave their ordinary 

 avocations and come into court to testify that they are fully sat- 

 isfied that the case is a clear case of cruelty, can such evidence 

 be overbalanced by that of any number of experts who are not 

 present, see nothing that occurs, know nothing of the age, 

 health, strength, or bodily condition of the horse at the time, 

 and who base their calculations simply upon the avoirdupois 

 weight of the animal ? It is perfectly evident, then, I say, that the 

 highest and best evidence which any court or jury can ask or pos- 

 sibly obtain in a case of overloading, overworking, or overdriv- 

 ing, is the evidence of the horse himself, as interpreted by those 

 present when the cruelty is inflicted. 



" Cruelty begins very far short of taking the extreme strength 

 of the animal. God has given to men and animals an excess of 

 strength, to be husbanded carefully and used occasionally. But 

 to task that strength to its full limit unnecessarily is against na- 

 ture, breaks down the man or the animal before his or its time, 

 and is a cruelty against which men, having speech and reason, 

 may protect themselves, but against which animals, having neither 

 speech nor reason like men., t?iust look to them for protections"^ 



