230 BAT A VI A. 
What pretensions can these people have to dehcate feehng 
and sensations of horror for animal suffering, whose great de- 
' light is to witness, like the barbarous Romans, a miserable 
criminal, perhaps for a very slight offence, torn in pieces b}' 
tygers and buffalos ? Neither is it more likely that, in a 
country where animal existence is so abundantly pro- 
duced and abundantly destro3^ed, the forbearance should 
have originated in any peculiar degree of respect and value 
for animal life. It is scarcity that in general constitutes 
value. 
The torrid zone indeed is probably not the country in 
which such a system had its origin — where all nature is in a 
state of visible animation — where the naked earth, the woods, 
the waters, and even the rocks under the waters, are teeming 
with animal life — where every step that a man takes, every 
time that he opens his mouth, whether to inhale the atmo- 
spheric air, to quench his thirst with pure water, or to eat 
his lifeless vegetables (as he is willing to suppose them), he 
necessarily destroys myriads of living and sentient beings. 
With as little propriety can such a system, so misplaced, be 
referred to any refined notions of mercy and benevolence, 
but may, perhaps, more properly be considered as, one 
of those unaccountable institutions which are sometimes 
fbund to militate against local consistency, and which af- 
ford no slight argument in favour of their foreign origin. On 
the same ground of reasoning Ave might venture, perhaps, to 
infer that the consecration of the cow is more likely to have 
had its origin on the blieak and barren heights of Tartary than 
on the warm and fertile plains of Hindostan. 
7 
