EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
592 
would torture animals, or even suffer them to be tortured, for 
the sordid purpose of filling their poekets. We would rather 
charitably suppose that those who licensed the performance 
of such freaks of cruelty were in ignorance of the pain and 
suffering the poor creatures, the subjects of them, were made 
to endure. The same excuse, however, cannot be alleged foi 
the Poitevins. They acknowledge to have made some hun¬ 
dred or hundred and fifty ascents in balloons with animals 
strung on to them, happily and creditably for us, “in other 
countries.” To persons unacquainted .with the habits and 
feelings of animals, and uninformed in the matter of slinging 
them, it might appear harmless enough, so far as any bodily 
injury was to be apprehended, to suspend a horse in a well- 
contrived and adjusted slinging apparatus, and hoist him in 
it into mid-air. Even supposing, however, this were true, 
there is still to be taken into account the animal’s sensations, 
to say nothing of putting him, per force, into a situation of 
peril, in which, in case of need, he is deprived of the power of 
helping himself. We do not imagine even M. Poitevin will 
contend that animals are destitute of the sense of fear, 
alarm, or dread, no more than we ourselves are. But this, 
which is the most favorable view we can take pf the affair, 
is not the correct interpretation of it. For the real fact is, 
that animals do suffer corporeal, as well as mental pain in 
slings, of which, among horses, we have instances without 
number at our elbow. We wish the worthy magistrate, before 
whom the case was investigated, had himself but once been 
eye-witness to the resistance a horse makes the moment it 
finds itself shackled by slings of any description, resulting 
from the surprise, the embarrassment, the annoyance, nay 
harassing fright, it finds itself suddenly thrown into, and 
which becomes aggravated into actual pain, running on 
to torture, the moment it is lifted up off its legs, he would 
not have hesitated, as he did, what decision he was bound, 
in justice to the contending parties, and in humanity to the 
poor brutes, to come to ; nor would he have so quietly 
listened, as he did, to the sophisms put forth to prove that 
neither “pain” nor “ torture” were inflicted. 
