656 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS 
numbers, continue from age to age growing more and more licen¬ 
tious, more and more in need of coercion and restraint. Is this 
because, as we advance in civilization and refinement, and our 
wants, real or imaginary, become augmented, so our propensities, 
naturally bad, grow worse 1 or is it that an extended and polished 
education sharpens, or, as some say, morbifies, our senses and sus¬ 
ceptibilities to that degree, that, what our forefathers regarded as 
harmless or innocent, we pronounce to be inhuman and cruel ? In 
days of old there existed no such laws as “ The Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals’ Bill ”—of which we this month publish an 
“Abstractwhat is now called cruelty then passed as sport or di¬ 
version. Every man preserved the right Nature gave him, to do as 
he liked with his own. And nothing short of the abuse of such 
natural license could ever have deprived him of it. Inheriting his 
fondness for the chase from his patriarchal ancestor, Nimrod, man 
pursues wild animals for sport; and with like diversion, or for the 
purpose of ascertaining and propagating the most elegant and use¬ 
ful of their species, he, in a state of domestication, institutes races 
and other feats of competition between them; but to set animals 
fighting with each other for mere mastery, or to spur them to such 
trials of competition as answer no useful end, while they put life 
and limb in jeopardy, is, assuredly, wanton barbarity. 
These seem to be the only general principles we have to guide 
us in legislating on such a subject as “ cruelty to animals.” To 
define what cruelty is—what it means—what is to be interpreted 
as “cruelty,” and what is not, has evidently puzzled the framers 
of the bill in question. What, therefore, have our legislators 
done ] Why, they have acted as doctors do when they have a 
disease to treat whose nature they do not understand. They have 
prescribed empirically—have treated symptoms as'they arose to 
their view, leaving the thorn still in the flesh. Remedies for cruelty 
are as puzzling to discover as remedies for cholera ; and the former 
becomes more perplexing to disentangle and prescribe for from the 
circumstance of its existence, unlike that of cholera, being subject 
to doubt or dispute. In order that on so momentous as well as 
mysterious a question we may resort to the most learned, if not 
the most experienced authorities, let us see what our “ Lords” and 
“ Commons” say about it. 
