REVIEW.—CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. 
449 
the duty of kindness to animals should be brought before the peo¬ 
ple of this town and neighbourhood from several pulpits every 
year. The executors of his will have this year requested me to 
undertake this pleasing task, and, by the kind concurrence of your 
minister, I am permitted to bring the subject before you.” 
Such is the opening explanatory paragraph of a Sermon which, 
some time ago, was kindly sent us by our excellent professional 
brother, Mr. Godwin, Veterinary Surgeon of Birmingham, and 
which ought to have been, and would have been, noticed before 
now, had not our pages been crowded with matters to w’hich we 
were compelled to give precedence; not, we would add, because 
they in our mind were of more weight, but because, being written 
expressly for our pages, or having reference to events or concerns 
of the day, matters of standard and permanent import, such as the 
one now before us, were forced and could well afford to give place 
to such ephemera. As advocates for humanity to the brute creation, 
and denouncers of all contrary practices, veterinarians ought not, 
nor do they, we should hope, play second to any class of persons. 
To beings through whose ailments they get their livelihoods, whose 
structure and economy they are believed with that view to have 
well studied, and with whose dispositions and propensities they 
are supposed to be better acquainted than other people, for veteri¬ 
nary surgeons to behave with any unseeming humanity—nay ! 
otherwise, indeed, than kind—would be flagrantly flying in the 
face of their professions. They profess to soothe, not to irritate— 
to heal, not to make sores. The ver} r institution of the veterinary 
art is an act of signal humanity to brute-kind; and he who carries 
its practice into most efficient ends is one of the best members of 
the Animal’s Friend Society.” 
That kind-hearted bequests, such as the one before us, contri¬ 
bute to this good cause by—through the persuasive and benignant 
oratory of the pulpit—softening man’s heart, and disposing it, in 
gratitude and duty, charitably and mercifully towards our brute 
servants, we have every reason to believe and to hope; and we 
see no good reason why, on occasions, moral lessons inculcating 
this Christian obligation should not be read by our divine teachers. 
At the same time, we are full of apprehension that, were the matter 
to be left entirely in hands so well intentioned, the object would to 
