SPECIFIC OPHTHNALMIA. 47 
Man cannot make a property of life; he has no power over its con- 
tinuance; it may cease to-morrow without his permission and against 
his wishes; it is removed from and independent of his control. Man 
can have nothing like a property in that which is altogether above his 
sway. He then, obviously, has no right to enslave any living creature, 
and take no care of the existence which he has deprived of liberty to 
provide for itself. When he captures a wild animal and retains it in 
captivity, he entails upon himself the duty of providing for its wants, 
and becomes answerable for its welfare. He violently usurps nature’s 
province—obviously, he adopts nature’s obligations; if he rebel against 
such a moral contract and persist in viewing dominion as absolute 
authority, as something which invests him with power to feed or starve 
at his pleasure, house or turn into the air according to his will, nature 
opposes such arrogance, and, releasing the life by death, takes the op- 
pressed creature from the tyranny of the oppressor. 
Under some such compact the horse is given to man. The implied, 
not written obligation, may not be acknowledged or understood; but, 
nevertheless, it exists, and the terms of the bond are rigidly exacted. 
Let us regard this matter in relation to specific ophthalmia. A gentle- 
man possesses five horses; he builds a stable twenty feet long, twelve 
feet wide, and nine feet high; into this place he crams the five huge 
lives. We will suppose the place to be good of its kind, to be paved 
with Dutch clinkers and to be perfectly drained; still each horse stands 
in a stall four feet wide; in this it has to remain all night and the major 
portion of the day. In this space it has to relieve its body; the liquid, 
to be sure, may run off by the drain, but it has to fall upon straw, which 
imbibes some, and to flow over bricks, which 
absorb more; the solid excrement is during the 
day removed by the groom as it falls, but it re- 
mains in an open basket to taint the air of the 
place. We will suppose the horses and their at- 
tendants, occasionally, are the sole inhabitants, 
and the building contains none of those things, 
living and otherwise, which ladies are pleased 
to order should ‘‘be carried into the stable.” 
Will the sane reader assert that the space is 
large enough for its purposes? The stable never 
can be sufficiently ventilated: it will smell of 
impurity—of hay, straw, oats, ammonia, and of THE SPECIES OF EYE WHICII IS 
various other things. The air feels hot. Can GENERALLY SUPPOSED Tv RE 
MOST LIABLE TO OPHTHALMIA. 
it be wondered at? ‘Ten large lungs have been 
breathing it for weeks and years, during twenty out of every twenty- 
