"The poorest beetle that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great
As when a giant dies."
This pathetic lesson of humanity is given by the poet of nature.
Aiming at the same end by different means, our benevolent artist here
steps forth as the instructor of youth, the friend to mercy, and
advocate of the brute creation.
In the prints before us, an obdurate boy begins his career of cruelty
by tormenting animals; repeated acts of barbarity sear his heart, he
commits a deliberate murder, and concludes in an ignominious death.
These gradations are natural, I had almost said inevitable; and that
parent who discovers the germ of barbarity in the mind of a child,
and does not use every effort to exterminate the noxious weed, is an
accessory to the evils which spring from its baneful growth. To check
these malign propensities becomes more necessary from the general
tendency of our amusements. Most of our rural and even infantine
sports are savage and ferocious. They arise from the terror, misery,
or death of helpless animals. A child in the nursery is taught to
impale butterflies and cockchafers. The schoolboy's proud delight is
clambering a tree
"To rob the poor bird of its young."
Grown a _gentle_ angler, he snares the scaly fry, and scatters leaden
death among the feathered tenants of the air. Ripened to man, he
becomes a mighty hunter, is enamoured of the chase, and crimsons his
spurs in the sides of a generous courser, whose wind he breaks in the
pursuit of an inoffensive deer or timid hare.
Many of our town diversions have the same tendency. The bird, whose
melodious warblings echo through the grove, is imprisoned in a
sort of a _Bastille_, where, like an unplumed biped in a similar
situation, it frequently perishes through anguish or want of food.
The high-crested chanticleer, whose courage is innate, and only
vanquished by death, is furnished with weapons of pointed steel,
when, set in opposition to one of the same species, armed in a
similar style, these two champions, for the diversion of the _humane_
lords of the creation, lacerate each other until one or both of them
are slain.
The faithful dog, whose attachment and gratitude are exemplary, and
worthy the imitation of man, when in the possession of a farmer, or
country 'squire, is well fed, and has no great cause of complaint,
except his ears and tail being lopped to _improve nature_, and
having a rib now and then broken by a gentle spurn; but if the
poor quadruped falls into the hands of a tanner, a surgeon, or an
_experimental_ philosopher, of what avail are his good qualities?[26]
The Abyssinian cruelties of our slaughter-houses[27] and kitchens[28]
I do not wish to enumerate. The catalogue would fill a volume.
Humanity demands that the brute creation should be protected by the
Legislature.
The Mosaic Law, to guard against tortures being inflicted on animals
which were slaughtered for sustenance, ordained them to die by a
highly polished and pointed instrument; if the bone was pierced, or
the beast mangled, it was deemed unclean, and burnt.