NON NOBIS SOLUM. 
501 
They are endowed with an animal nature quite similar to our 
own ; they are subject to laws of health in a great degree anala- 
gous. If a farmer would have his stock in good order for work 
or milk, or meat, it is just as necessary that they should be kept 
in good health, as that we ourselves should be in good health for 
the discharge of the duties or enjoyment of the blessings of life. 
These domestic animals not only have active powers like our own, 
subject to the same laws of health, but they have a nervous system 
closely resembling ours. They are sensible to all the degrees and 
varieties of pain, and as if to mark a sacred community of suffer- 
ing between us and them, they express it in the same way that we 
do. Though Providence has given to man what it has denied to 
the lower animals, the power of describing his sufferings in 
words, yet in the extremity of pain he abandons language and 
takes refuge in groans and cries. The suffering beast and the 
suffering man speak the same inarticulate language, and the poor 
dumb animal is entitled to the same exemption from gratuitous 
pain. The person who subjects his horse or his ox to unnecessary 
suffering may walk on two legs and counterfeit humanity, but he 
is a brute. General Pleasanton, the eminent cavalry leader of 
the army of the Potomac, speaking recently about the nervous 
system of the horse, says, “ that horses are like men. There are 
men who, without being cowards, have not the nerve to go into 
battle. Everjdiody who has been in battle will tell you that. It 
is so with some horses. They haven’t nerve to go into a light. I 
have seen horses go through everything to get away from a bat’ 
tie-field. They would commit suicide by jumping over a precipice 
or before a locomotive. Give the most valuable horse in the 
world to a fool who is incapable of loving him, and he will spoil 
him in a day.” 
I can almost imagine, as I contemplate our friend’s part in 
agriculture, the Genius thereof hovering over fields of golden 
grain that woos the wind upon the slopes of twice ten thousand 
hills, and about to confer a more beautiful sign of her favor upon 
those who under Providence contributed to her delight at the 
bounteous sight, long hesitating whether her first token should 
descend upon the horse or upon man. As surely as it is worth 
