ATROCIOUS CRUELTY. 177 



ing sparrows by laying salt on their tails. As to 

 the effects of the late Game Bill, many, or per- 

 haps most people, profess the opinion that it has 

 increased poaching. On what ground such an opinion 

 stands, I am uninformed ; on the contrary, it ap- 

 pears to me that its effects have proved mate- 

 rially the reverse, judging from general newspaper 

 reports : among those, a Shrewsbury Chronicle of last 

 year observes " The proportion of persons com- 

 mitted for poaching this year, is vastly less than 

 in any former season." Indeed this seems a neces- 

 sary result of an act which legalized and so widely 

 extended the market. I did not formerly forget 

 the Parson- of Penslow, and I must not now neg- 

 lect to renew my just reproaches and cautions 

 against the horrible tortures inflicted by cold-hearted 

 and unreflecting people on animals, which, no doubt, 

 it is our natural right, as well as our interest to 

 destroy by the quickest and the easiest mode of 

 death, for these animals were endowed by nature 

 with the same chartered right to hunt for their 

 support, which we ourselves claim from the same 

 authority. My own eyes, in early youth, beheld 

 the heart-rending sight of a rat roasted alive, and 

 the piercing shrieks of the tortured animal, though 

 at the distance of seventy years, agonize and make 

 me shudder ! The hellish act was perpetrated by 

 an old beldame of the name of Stubblefield, house- 

 keeper to a clergyman who taught a few scholars. 

 I once saw also the shopman of a grocer in a 

 country town, running in the street, after a rat 

 tied by the leg with a long string, its back all 

 i 5 



