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CHAPTER YI. 
SUMMING-UP JUDGMENT AGAINST THE RAT. 
Having now dismissed the magistrates, let us bring 
Master Kat to judgment upon the real merits and demerits 
of his doings and position with regard to mankind. 
That it was a wise ordination of Providence which brought 
this animal to our shores at a time when our towns and 
cities began to increase in size and density, no thinking man 
can deny ; for there is no doubt, but, from his persevering 
and boring propensities, and his all-devouring stomach, he 
renders mankind a most essential service, by keeping 
the drains and sewers in densely populated districts in a 
state of comparative health. Nature has provided him with 
every necessary quality both in form and inclination for this 
peculiar office ; and for man to molest or destroy him in his 
legitimate province, or in the field of his salutary labours, is, 
in the eye of common justice, not only barbarous ingratitude, 
but downright animal-murder, and, in my humble opinion, 
ought to be checked by every legitimate means. But, on the 
other hand, when rats leave their territories, and intrude 
on those of man, to the destruction of his peace and 
property, then does the subject wear a totally different 
aspect. For it can be proved, by a world of witnesses, 
that he not only undermines the very foundations of our 
castles and out- buildings, but destroys our furniture and 
apparel, eats our wills and deeds, purloins our watches and 
jewellery, consumes our grain, destroys our poultry and 
game of all kinds, ransacks our dovecots, our gardens, 
our orchards, slaughterhouses, fish-ponds, larders, dairies, 
storehouses, &c., and perpetrates a host of other outrages 
both on sea and land ; sometimes murdering our children 
in their beds, and devouring our departed friends and 
kindred. Then, so far from his being man's friend, he 
becomes his most daring and rapacious enemy. I say most 
daring and rapacious ; for after summing up his various 
doings, show me, in the vast creation, one animal that 
