i 88o.] Modern Cynolatry. 7^3 
to thousands of women and children. To demand for the 
poor cheap food, clothing, shelter, instruction is wise and 
just. But, alas, when demagogues clamour for cheap folly, 
cheap vice, or cheap crime for the million ! 
The fact is that dogs, unless they can be kept entirely 
within private boundaries, have of necessity upon their 
owners an effect which is anything but elevating or human- 
ising. They are, according to their advocate, “ the most 
sensitive, vivacious, highly sensitive and animated creatures 
in creation.” In other words, they are the most restless, 
meddling, obstrusive, and intrusive of brutes. Nothing, 
living or lifeless, are they willing to let alone. Hence the dog- 
owner who leaves his cur at liberty must either be constantly 
paying damages and apologising to his neighbours, or, — 
the more common alternative — he becomes utterly hardened, 
loses all sense of justice, and sets the injured parties at 
defiance, which, thanks to the absurdities of the law, is no 
very difficult matter. As an instance how indifferent dog- 
owners become to the rights of others, we may turn to 
“ Ouida ” herself. After recounting a case where, at the 
Lewisham Police Court, a certain person had been fined 
£10 because his retriever had bitten a woman, this writer, 
without a thought of pity for the wounded woman, exclaims 
that the owner, “ if fined at all ,” should have been punished 
for not giving the brute more liberty ! “ Poor, imprisoned, 
tortured dog ” is her exclamation ! This is quite in harmony 
w th Dr. Lindsay’s “ mere biting,” and leads me to believe 
that the exclamation ascribed to a lady of fashion whose dog 
had severely bitten a poor little child may be something 
more than a mere apologue. 
It is perfectly true that many great men have been fond 
of dogs. But what strange propensities and freaks might we 
not justify by a perfeftly analogous plea ? Goethe, the type 
of sterling culture, as was Earl Lytton the type of eleCtro 
culture, wisely said, man loves the dog because both are 
“ erbaermliche Schufte.” If the predilection for these animals 
has been handed down from barbarous times into an age of 
civilisation it is because they have readily made themselves 
the accomplices of man’s vices. Cruelty— by which I under- 
stand the infliction of pain for mere amusement— would lack 
its chief agent were it not for the dog. I will merely hint 
that this is by no means the sole moral evil in which he is 
made instrumental. 
Some day, if the progress of which our moralists dream 
is not all a delusion, dog-fancying will be regarded as one of 
the strangest and least creditable survivals from pristine 
