540 
medy in the Jaw ; for what is a right with- 
@ut a remedy? how vague and uncertain 
must be the ideas and the operations of 
humauity in their behalf, 
It must be acknowledged, indeed, and 
cannot be too much lamented, that the 
ideason this subject of many of the best- 
intentioned people are sufiiciently vague, 
and that unless their intentions can be 
rendered more definite and rational, they 
must continue to injure that glorious 
eause which they really mean to save. 
I deprecate their displeasure if I presume 
to speak without reserve, and to de- 
scend to particulars, a method of pro- 
ceeding so constantly dreaded in this 
ease; but mere professions generally 
tend to ne particular end, and not sel- 
dom are equally destitute of meaning as 
of use. Men engaged in a public cause 
should patiently, and without prejudice, 
attend to the various opinions and mc- 
tives of their compatriots, and, from the 
agvregate, endeavour to form an impar- m 
tial judgment, on which to ground ge- 
neral rules of thought and action, slight- 
ing unimportant differences for the sake 
of the main end. Superficial, caprici- 
ous, and interested views, dissonance of 
opinions, and a want ef concert, are the 
invariable causes of il] saccess and fai- 
lures in attempts at public reform. 
There is a numerous party of the ten- 
der-Learted, influenced to a certain de- 
gree by the ‘absurd and erroneous: prin- 
ciple of the Pythagoreans: although sup- 
porting themselves daily on the flesh of 
the finest animals, in obedience to the 
dictates of nature, and under the sanc- 
tion of reason, they yet scruple, and 
even dread to take away the life of the 
meanest, having at hand one of those set 
forms of words, which sound prettily, 
and mean nothing—Why should I deprive 
an animal of that ‘life which I cannot give? 
‘This is the grand source of misery to the 
inferior domestic animals, dogs and cats, 
which are bred up in useless numbers, 
to be afterwards tortured to death by 
lingering famine, or wanton cruelty. 
The absurd and sophisticated humanity 
of the Turks is most remarkable in the 
case of dogs, which they will not suffer 
to be killed, but to perish by sickness 
and famine, or by devouring each other. 
In our cities and towns, a poor dog or 
eat becoming useless or dis carded, 
taken from its comfortable home, Bet 
purposely lost, on the forlorn hope that 
some one, with greater convenience oF 
more charity than its first master, will 
pity and succour its distress, But who 
On Humanity to Aninals. 
[Jan. } 
will pee as inmates disease and poy 
verty? How much more humane and 
prudent in every view, to deprive these 
animals of a life that is no longer useful, 
and must soon become miserable to them. 
selves? ‘The greatest misery, perhaps, in 
the loss of lite, is expectation of the 
blow; of this brutes may, and ought to 
be kept totally unaware; death is the 
best boon you can bestow upon them. 
In another sense, the extinction of use- 
less life is politic, and subservient to the 
cause of prospective humanity; you di- 
minish the number of these inferior ani- 
mals, and thereby enhance their worth, 
and comfort of existence. To kill anid 
be kitled—to eat and be eaten, form a pro- 
“minent part of nature’s universal scheme, 
the task of rendering which, as far as pos- . 
sible, perfect and consonant with justice, 
she has committed to the discriminating 
powers of human reason. 
Other errors of the humane are stig- 
matizing those as acts of cruelty which 
are reaily not so, arguing from abuses 
against the use of necesssary, at least 
indifferent acts, and thereby, in the first 
instance, closing up every avenue to re- 
form, and by authorising the elamour of 
hee opponents, that such reformers el~ . 
ther seek to restrain men in their most 
necessary business or legitimate plea- 
sures, or that they are absolutely unin- 
formed as to the nature and extent of 
their own pretensions. For example, 
how ridiculous it is, to hear that man de= 
claiming against the cruelty of horse- 
racing, cock-fighting, and boxing, who 
never scruples to ride in a stage-coach, 
or post-chaise, or to have his iuggage con- 
veyed in a carman’s cart. It is not pre- 
tended that the former are equi-necessary 
with the latter, nor is that the question; 
but the former are undoubtedly practices 
the abuses alone of which can be ligiti- 
mately controlled; and as to cruelty— 
the accumulated miseries of the whole 
animal creation are comparatively plea- 
sures to the everlastingly agonized teel-- 
ings of the post, stage, and the carman’s 
horse! I should like to contemplate a 
possible world, where all contentions, 
whether in the arena, human or brute, 
the circus, or elsewhere, might*be ex- 
cluded, and my soul thrills with compas- 
sion, to witness the wounded feelings and 
the gored sides of the vanquished race- 
horse, belonging even to the best mas- 
ter; but in the present world, we must 
necessarily witness striving and conten- 
tion, and suffering, and must rest satistied 
with the sublime endowment of reason, 
the 
