AMERICAN INSTITUTE, 267 



native Instincfs, and his master's principles, making your carefully-nurtured 

 domestic institutions unfit for your employment. This is unsound reasoning, 

 and the sooner it is corrected the better it will be for the farming community. 



Men must be made to feel that domestic animals must be domesticated ; 

 i. e., kept at home j that a man has no more right to keep a herd of depre- 

 dating quadrupeds than of bipeds. That if he wishes to keep domestic 

 animals, he must take care of them, and be responsible for their conduct. 



This is a desirable consummation. It is the law of the land, and would 

 probably be adopted universally as practical law, were it not for a statute 

 passed April 18, 1838, which denies to a person liable to contribute to the 

 maintenance of a division fence, all right to damages incurred by reason of 

 his portion of such fence being out of repair. 



This act, however, is limited t« division fences, and does not apply to 

 any others. All road fences, and other than division fences, kept up by 

 adjoining owners, fall under the general law, which does not impose upon 

 the owner the duty of protecting his cultivated land from stray cattle. 



That duty belongs to the owner of the cattle, and it should be so 

 strongly enforced that farmers may feel that their lands, as well as their 

 dwellings, are under the protection of the law. 



To make that protection, however, effectual, some modifications should 

 be incorporated in the statutes. 



1st. All estrays should be liable to seizure by an inhabitant, and he should 

 receive a suitable compensation upon delivering them at the public pound. 



2d. Constables should be compelled, whenever required, to convey any 

 estray to the pound, and they should then be entitled to such compensation. 



(These provisions are now made law for some particular towns and for 

 the whole county of \Yestchester, and are found effectual.) 



3d. Estrays should be held liable for all damage done, and, if not re- 

 deemed should be S'old, after proper notice to pay damages and expenses. 



To make this principle effectual it must be asserted in a statute. 

 Although the law would afford a remedy, it must be obtained at the end of 

 an expensive litigation, and the statute of 18S8, although intended solely 

 to compel our unwilling neighbor to contribute his fair proportion of a 

 boundary fence, has done its part in creating a doubt as to the legal obliga- 

 tion of the owner of trespassing cattle, by declaring that such obligation 

 shall not exist in trespasses where the owner of the adjoining land has not 

 maintained his share of the fence in proper repair. 



This statute should be modified so as to compel, in the usual mode, a 

 just contribution toward the expense of a division fence, but not by offer- 

 ing temptation and immunity to the owner of unruly cattle, to pasture them 

 without legal responsibility, upon his neighbor's land. 



Laws that resort to such motives ought never to find a place in the sta- 

 tute book, and only serve to illustrate the sarcastic remark of Oxensteirn : 

 " You see, my son, how little wisdom is reqviired in the government of men." 



The inconveniences of fences have been very well set forth in a communi- 

 cation made by Mr. Pell, at a former meeting of the club, and consist of : 



