96 
VICIOUS HORSES. 
hesitates to bend in explicit obedience to his lordly will, is set 
down as refractory, and a culprit that has rendered himself worthy 
of the utmost severity the art of man can inflict; and this idea 
leads him to acts of the grossest injustice and cruelty. 
We are, both for our safety and comfort, authorized in counter¬ 
acting any acts likely to endanger either of them, but counteract¬ 
ing and punishing are widely different: we may be, and I should 
say are, quite justified in taking life where we consider our own 
in immediate danger, but even in such a case we might not be au¬ 
thorized in inflicting punishment. In all cases before we do this, 
even supposing an attack on our own lives was meditated, we 
should see why such was the case. If a wild beast attacks us 
from hunger, shoot or destroy him; but he merits no torture or 
punishment. If we approach too near a troop of wild horses, 
possibly they would attack us. Why 1 Not from ferocity, but 
from a fear that we contemplated some mischief towards them . 
Few, if any, wild animals will attack us, if we do not approach 
near enough to excite their fears or suspicions;—the horse would 
never do so. Whether on once being subjugated he submits quietly 
to man, is any proof that he was especially designed for our use, is 
too abstruse a subject for me to consider; but that he does in a 
general way so submit is a fact not to be disputed. One reason 
why we might be disposed to imagine that the will of Providence 
had less to do with his docility than the will of the animal, is 
this:—the zebra, with a trifling difference as to size, would be as 
useful to us as the horse; he, however, will not submit to the same 
subjugation from us : he remains indocile, nay, vicious and savage, 
to the last, though from make, shape, and action, as superior to the 
ass as the horse is to the zebra. This looks more like docility in 
the horse inducing him to serve man, than Providence ordaining 
him to do so. 
That any carnivorous animal, of strength and size enough to give 
him courage to attack man, should do so, arises from the most 
common of all causes: the same that induces us to attack a lamb, 
a hare, or a fowl; the beast wants to eat us, as we want to eat the 
animals mentioned, the only difference being that we fancy the 
lion has no right to eat us, though we have a self-constituted right 
to eat the lamb . If Providence thinks as highly of us as our arro¬ 
gance induces us to think the case, why the deuce was the lion 
sent ] 
It is a fact, but one the reverse of being indicative of the good 
feeling of mankind, that, generally speaking, the first proof a cap¬ 
tive (be he what he may) gets of being captive is severity from his 
captor; who, instead of endeavouring by kindness to reconcile his 
prisoner to his situation, sets about breaking his spirit, in lieu of 
