1809. ] 
mulate no mercenary informers, which I 
admit often to be necessary to give effect 
to criminal justice; I place the lower 
world entirely under the genuine un- 
bought sympathies of man. 
No one is likely to prosecute by in- 
dictment, or to carry a person before a 
magistrate, without probable, or rather 
without obvious and flagrant cause, when 
he can derive no personal benefit from 
the prosecution, nor carry it on without 
trouble and expense. The law is, there- 
fore, more open to the charge of ineffi- 
cacy than of vexation, 
It cai indeed have no operation, ex- 
cept when compassionate men (and I 
trust they will become more numerous 
from the moral sense which this Bill is 
calculated to awaken) shall set the law 
in Motion against manifest and disgust- 
ing offenders, to deliver themselves from 
the pain and horror which the immedi- 
ate view of wilful and wanton cruelty is 
capable of exciting, or is rather sure to 
excite, in a yenerous nature. 
_ What possible ditficalty then can be 
imposed upon the magistrate, who! has 
only to judge upon hearing, from his 
own-human feelings, what such disinter- 
ested informers have judged of from hav- 
ing seen and felt. The task is surely 
most easy, and by uo means novel. In- 
deed, the whole administration of law, 
iN many analogous cases, consists 1 no- 
thing else but in discriminations, gene- 
rally more difficult in cases of personal 
wrongs. 
Cruelty to an apprentice, by beating, 
or over-labour, is judged of daily upon 
the very principle which this Biil will 
bring into action in the case of an op- 
pressed animal. 
To distinguish the severest discipline, 
to command obedience, and to enforce 
activity in such dependents, from bratal 
ferocity and cruelty, never yet puzzled a 
judge or a jury,’never at least in my 
very long experience; and when want 
of sustenance is the complaint, the most 
‘culpable over-frugality is never confound- 
ed with a wicked and malicious privation 
of food. 
The same distinctions occur frequently 
upon the plea of moderate chastisement, 
when any other servant complains of his 
master, or when it becomes necessary to 
measure the degree of violence, which ts 
justifiable in repelling violence, or in the 
preservation of righis. 
Tha the same manner the damage from 
a frivolous assault or of a battery, the ef- 
fect c” provocation or sudden temper, 1s 
Lord Erskine’s Speech on Cruclty to Animals. 563 
daily distinguished in our courts, from a 
severe and cold-blooded outrage. A 
hasty word, which just conveys matter 
that is actionable, is, in the same man- 
ver, distinguished in aimoment from ma-= 
lignant and dangerous slander. Mis~ 
takes in the extent of authority, which’ 
happen every day in the discharge of the 
complicated duties of the magistracy, are 
never confounded for a moment, even 
when they have trenched severely upon 
personal liberty,. with an arbitrary and 
tyralinous imprisonment. Unguarded or 
slight trespasses upon property, real- or 
personal, ure im the same way the daily 
subjects of distinction from malicious de- 
privations of rights, or serious interrups 
tions of their enjoyment. 
Similar, or rather nicer distinctions, 
are occuring daily in our courts—when 
libel or no libel is the question, A line must 
be drawn between injurious calumny, 
and fair, though, perhaps, unpleasant ani 
inadversigi; but plain good sense, with- 
out Icgal subtlety, is sure to settle it 
with justice—so every man may enjoy 
what is his own, but not to the Injury 
of his neighbour. What is an niury, or 
what only a loss, without being iijuris 
ous, is the question in ail cases of nuie 
sance, and: they are satisfactorily settled 
by the common understandings and feel- 
ings of mankind. 
My Lords, there would be no end of 
these analogies, if I were to pursue them : 
I might bring my whole professional life, 
for near thirty years, in review before 
your Lordships. 
I appeal to the learned Lords of the 
House, whether these distinctions are not - 
of daily occurrence. I appeal to my 
noble and learned friend on the woolsack:, 
whether, when he sat as chief justice of 
the Commen Pleas, he found any diffi. 
culty in these distinctions. I appeal to 
my noble and learned friend who sits just 
by him, whose useful and valuable life 
is wholly occupied amidst these ques-~ 
tions, whether they are doubtful and 
dangerous in the decision, and whether 
they are not precisely tn point with the 
ditticulties which I have anticipated, or 
with any others which opponents to the 
Bill caiy possibly anticipate. I make a 
similar appeal to another noble and 
Jearned friend, who has filled the hish. 
est situation; [ do not see him at this 
moment in his place, but to him also T 
might make the same fearless applica- 
tion. 
I cannot, therefore, conceive a case on - 
which a magistrate would be exposed to 
aly 
i gn ES 
