TORTURE OF BEASTS FOR CHRISTIAN PLEASURE AND PROFIT ! 157 



man of Wokingham. This sermon was soon after published, but without, so far as 

 we know, any effectual improvement in the public mind. The Philosophical and 

 Practical Treatise on Horses, in 1796, strongly recommended the general subject 

 of justice and mercy towards beasts, to the serious consideration and exertions of the 

 Clergy. In the last year, 1819, a Clergyman of the Church of England, has 

 published a rational and humane tract on the subject ; but we think there is a mis- 

 taken principle predominant in nearly all publications of this description, which 

 must ever be fatal to their success : it is the classing together of actions, utterly 

 dissimilar and adverse, in point of justice and moral consequence : for example, 

 Bull-baiting Cock-fighting, and Pugilism. We have already made the discrimi- 

 nation, and must now repeat, there must surely be great obtuseness of feeling, 

 where the difference in point of justice and fairness cannot be discovered between 

 the baiting or torture of the bull, and the voluntary combat of the cocks. Can it 

 be expected that men who are advocates even for the baiting of animals, will relin- 

 quish lawful sports, against the fair exercise of which, at any rate, the plea of 

 injustice cannot be urged ? Baiting- to death of any animal, in the natural, 

 unsophisticated conscience of things, is a crime appertaining to the class of robbery 

 and murder : of robbery, as depriving the animal of its right to universal justice, 

 and of murder, by taking its life through the unjust and sanguinary means of 

 torture. Another great error, so it appears to our long experience, in most books 

 of the description under notice, is the reluctance manifested to taking fairly the 

 lives of starving or superfluous brute animals, and even the discouraging such 

 practice ; which however is, beyond all question, the greatest justice and kindness 

 which can possibly be done, both to them and their survivors. 



We must omit from shame, indignation, and tortured sensibility, the details at 

 large, with which we are unfortunately acquainted, of the practice of such barbari- 

 ties towards the victim Bull, sacrificed to the unrelenting deity of cruelty, and let 

 us add hypocrisy as goading him with spikes in his most tender parts, pouring 

 aquafortis upon his wounded back and loins disjointing his tailand all this in 

 the greater excess, in proportion to the kindness, forbearance, and inaptitude for 

 mischief and aggression, in the animal ! our pen drops from the hand with horror 

 and detestation, calling for blood instead of ink, if it must proceed. The legs 

 of the Bull Dog have been repeatedly cut off, at the lower joints, and the high- 

 couraged and desperate brute has, in that state of mutilation, run at the bull, and like 

 Widdrington, fought upon his stumps ! This infamous and beastly act of cruelty 

 however, degenerates into mere peccadillo, when compared with the ineffable and 

 countless tortures inflicted on the Bull. 



Can we sufficiently express our surprise, our utter astonishment, that enormities 

 like these, should not only be tolerated, but supported by authority and public 

 opinion, beneath the sun of intellectual philosophy, which illumines the nineteenth 

 century ? How can either philosophy or common sense, endure to hear the 



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