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creatures, living in the present and with no apprehension for the 
future, the so-called safety of a cage cannot he said to affect 
the happiness of their lives much; and on the other hand, in as 
far as we may regard them as reasoning creatures with some 
power of looking back and forwards, certainly all human experience 
goes to show that they would greatly prefer the freedom with its 
risks to captivity with its so-called security. The sufferings of 
wild creatures are often greatly over-stated for the sake of argu¬ 
ment. While wild life means the free exercise of all the natural 
faculties—which Herbert Spencer gives as the definition of happi¬ 
ness—and death, when it comes, is usually almost instantaneous, 
and where violent is accompanied by a natural deadening of the 
feelings, captive life, on the other hand, is a continued life-long 
denial of all these faculties, and death comes not unfrequently as 
the result of painful disease. 
Another argument in favour of keeping birds is that they 
brighten the lives of dwellers in towns, and especially of invalids. 
Presumably people do derive some pleasure from keeping these 
prisoners; but were the pleasure much more than it really is— 
judging by the indifference and neglect to which the birds are too 
often subjected—a pleasure which is possible only with an entire 
absence of sympathy with the victim of it, is a purely selfish one, 
and its gratification can be hardly advisable even in the interests 
of the tyrant, not to mention the victim. 
Again, we are told in defence of the practice in its worst forms 
in our alleys and small streets that we must not deny the poor 
the pleasures which the rich may enjoy. A most admirable maxim 
which might be carried out more thoroughly by most of us with ad¬ 
vantage, but a maxim inapplicable exactly in the one case where the 
interests of a third party are concerned. The rich man does and must 
have advantages which the poor one cannot enjoy; and while he 
who can afford to have a spacious aviary may keep his birds with 
far less cruelty, and consequently less objection, he who cannot 
afford it has no right to subject a living, sensitive creature to a life 
of dull misery. The poor man who is unable to keep his horse 
