306 THE HORSE. 



alarms of helpless and devoted animals, and in the 

 horrid spectacle of their bodies torn to pieces, and 

 their lives worn out by slow and lingering tortures ! 

 Such are the ecstatic pleasures enjoyed in our pits, 

 and at our bull rings; this may be even said to 

 compose a great part of the education of our youth, 

 as having a tendency to endow them with hardihood 

 and courage, and is defended in the senate, and even 

 enjoined as a duty by an act of the legislature ! It 

 has been said, that the law ought not to interfere, 

 but in case of a breach of the peace. Does it then 

 follow, that the grossest and most horrible atrocities 

 may be perpetrated under the pretence of sport, 

 granting it be done snugly and covertly, and no 

 breach of the peace be made ? What ideas are here 

 held forth, wherewith to imbue the vulgar mind ; 

 thus, when any favourite interest is in view, a dispen- 

 sation is at hand for the greatest enormities. If 

 brute animals be comprehended within the scheme of 

 general justice, if they are objects of legislative pro- 

 tection, they thence derive a legal, in addition to 

 their natural right, to be secured from unjust and 

 wanton aggression, from being baited, or staked down 

 to the torture. Such treatment is the abuse, not the 

 fair and honest use of them, and he or they, who 

 have committed that abuse, have committed a crime, 

 a fraud. A man may take the life, such is the com- 

 pulsive plan of nature and of reason, but no man can 

 have a property in the torture of his beast. The plea 

 for retaining this ancient barbarism of baiting animals 

 to death by way of amusement, is, that it is an act 

 of complacence and condescension to the labouring 



