ward. The humanity you shall extend to the lower creation will come abundantly round in its consequences to the whole human race. The moral sense which this law will awaken and inculcate, cannot but have a most powerful effect upon our feelings and sympathies for one another. The violences and out rages committed by the lower orders of the people, are offences more owing to want of thought and reflection, than to any malignant principle; and whatever, therefore, sets them a-thinking upon the duties of humanity, more especially where they have no rivalries nor resentments, and where there is a peculiar generosity in forbearance and compassion, has an evident tendency to soften their natures, and to moderate their passious, in their dealings with one another.

The effect of laws which promulgate a sound moral principle is incalculable; I have traced it in a thousand instances, and it is impossible to describe its value. My Lords, it was in consequence of these simple views, and on those indisputable principles, that I have framed the preamble of the very short Bill which I now present for a second reading to the House. I night, without preamble or preface, have proposed at once to enact, if not to declare wilful and wanton cruelty to the animals comprehended in it to be a misdemeanor, looking, as I now do, to the Commons to enforce the sanction of the law by pecuniary penalties. But then the grand efficacious principle would have been obscured; which, if fortunately adopted by your Lordships, will enact this law as a spontaneous rule in the mind of every man who reads it which will make every human bosom a sanctuary against cruelty-which will extend the influence of a British statute beyond even the vast bounds of British jurisdiction; and consecrate, perhaps, in all nations, and in all ages, that just and eternal principle, which binds the whole living world in one harmonious chain, under the dominion of enlightened man, the lord and governor of all.

I will now read to your Lordships the preamble as I have framed it.

"Whereas it has pleased Almighty God to subdue to the dominion, use, and comfort of man, the strength and faculties of many useful animals, and to provide others for his food; and whereas the abuse of that dominion, by cruel and oppressive treatment of such animals, is not only highly unjust and inmoral, but most pernicious in its example, having an

evident tendency to harden the heart against the natural feelings of humanity.”

This preamble may be objected to as too solemn and unusual in its language; but it must be recollected, that the subject of the Bill is most peculiar and unusual; and it being impossible to give practicable effect to the principle in its full extent, it became the more necessary, in creating a duty of imperfect obligation, where legal restraints would be in efficacious or impossible, to employ lan guage calculated to make the deepest impression upon the human inind, so as to produce, perhaps, more than the effect of law, where the ordinary sanctions of law were wanting.

It may be now asked, my Lords, why, if the principle of the Bill be justly unfolded by this preamble, the enacting part falls so very short of protecting the whole animal world, or at all events those parts of it which come within the reach of man, and which may be subject to abuse. To that I answer-It does protect them to a certain degree, by the very principle which I have been submitting to your consideration, and to protect them further, would be found to be attended with insurmountable difficulties, and the whole bill might be wrecked by an impracticable effort to extend it. But I shall be happy to follow others in the attempt. The Bill, however, as it regards all animals, creates a duty of imperfect obligation; and your Lordships are very well aware, that there are very many, and most manifest and important moral duties, the breaches of which human laws cannot practically deal with, and this I fear will be found to be the case in the subject now under consideration.

Animals living in a state of nature would soon over-run the earth, and eat up and consume all the sustenance of man, if not kept down by the ordinary pursuits and destruction of them, by the only means in which they can be kept down and destroyed; and it is remarka ble, that other animals have been formed by Nature, with most manifest instincts to assist us in this necessary exercise of duminion; and, indeed, without the act of man, these animals would them selves prey upon one another, and thus be visited by death, the inevitable, lot of all created things, in more painfal and frightful shapes. They have, be sides, no knowledge of the future, and their end, when appropriated fitly for our food, is without prolonged suffering. This economy of Providence, as it re

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gards animals, which from age to age have lived in an unreclaimed state, devoted to the use of man and of each other, may serve to reconcile the mind to that mysterious state of things in the present fallen and imperfect condition of the world.

This state of wild animals is further strikingly illustrated, by the view of such of them as have been spared from the human huntsinan, or the more uuinerous tribes of animals of prey. They are swept away by the elements in hard winters, retiring as most of them do, to a solitary, protracted, and painful death. Old age, my Lords, even amongst men, is but a rare blessing; amongst such brutes, perhaps, never. Old age can only be supported in comfort by that aid and tenderness from others, arising from the consciousness of those ties of nature, which it has not pleased the Divine Providence to dispense to the lower world; but which, as the greatest of all blessings, it has communicated to man. When the brates have fulfilled their duties to their young for their protection, they know them no more, and die of old age, or cold, or hunger, in view of one another, without sympathy or mutual assistance, or comfort.

It is the same, to a certain extent, with regard to those reclaimed animals devoted to man's use for food, whose faculties, as far as our observation is capable of a just comparison, approach nearer to human reason. The old age even of such animals, for the reasons adverted to, would seldom be satisfactory. When they pass, therefore, from life to death, in a manner which gives them no fore-taste of their doom, and consequently no sense of pain or sorrow in the road to it, the ways of God are justified to man.

The Bill, therefore, as it regards wild animals, could not easily have been framed for practicable operation, except by sanctioning as it does the principle of the preamble, which will, I trust, insensibly extend its influence to the protection of every thing that has life; by bringing habitually into the view of the mind the duties of imperfect obligation whichit inculcates; and with regard to animals bred by man, or reclaimed for food, it will directly protect them against the cruelties which are generally committed on them, viz. the unmercifully driving them and beating them on their passage to fairs and mar kets, and against unnecessary sufferings in the hour of death.

MONTHLY MAG. No. 186.

Before I leave this part of the subject, I think it right to advert to the practice of bull-baiting. I did not intend to have touched on it, but as I find that some who support the principle of this Bill, feel a difficulty as it regards this practice, it becomes necessary to consider how it will be affected by its operation.

A Bill was brought into the House of Commons, whilst I had the honour of a seat there, to repress this practice, but not upon the true principle. The framers of it were, I am persuaded, actuated by motives of humanity; but they mixed with it very laudable objects of human policy, which rather obscured the principle of protection to the animals. One great object of the Bill, and it was laudable on that account, was to put an end to sports, which led away the servants and labourers of manufacture and husbandry from the service of their masters.

The attack upon bull-baiting coming in this questionable shape, it was defended as politic, by talents capable of defending any thing; but talents (I am ready to admit) posssessed by a person of as humane and feeling a mind as ever distinguished any man-a man, besides, of a most beautiful genius, and whom I have always esteemed and honoured. The truth is, my Lords, that the matter was never fairly presented to his heart, and his intellect had got a wrong bias upon the subject. I shall not, however, come in contact with my excellent friend in his different view of this subject.

This Bill says not a word about bullbaiting. I only include a bull in my ca talogue of protected animals. They, therefore, who support the practice, may still support it successfully, if they can convince a Court and Jury, and the other Magistracies of their countrymen, that it does not fall within the description of wilful and wanton cruelty; and if that shall be the general feeling of courts and magistrates on the subject, the tice will cease to be supported.

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As to the tendency of barbarous sports of any kind or description whatsoever, to nourish the national characteristic of manliness and courage, the only shadow of argument I ever heard upon such occasions, all I can say is this: that, from the mercenary battles of the lowest of beasts (viz. human boxers) up to those of the highest and noblest that are tormented by man for his de

grading pastime, I enter this public protest against it. I never knew a man remarkable for heroic bravery, whose very aspect was not lighted up by gentleness and humanity; nor a kill him and eat him countenance, that did not cover the beart of a bully, or a poltroon,

As to other reclaimed animals, which are not devoted to our use as food, but which are most wonderfully organized to assist man in the cultivation of the earth, and by their superior activity and strength, to lessen his labour in the whole circle of his concerns, different protections become necessary, and they are also provided for by the Bill, and without the loss or abridginent of any one right of property in such animals. On the contrary, all its provisions protect them, as property, from the abuses of those to whose care and government their owners are obiged to commit them. They also reach the owners themselves, if, from an inordinate desire of gain, or other selfish consideration, they abuse the animals, their property in which is limited to the use.

It would be wasting your Lordships' time, if I were to enumerate the probable cases which this part of the Bill will com prehend. It is well observed by an Ita lian philosopher, that no man de sires to hear what he has already seen." Your Lordships cannot have walked the streets, or travelled on the roads, without being perfectly masters of this part of the subject. You cannot but have been almost daily witnesses to most disgusting cruelties practised upon beasts of carriage and bur then, by the violence and brutality of their drivers. To distinguish such bruta lity and criminal violence, from severe, but sometimes necessary discipline, may at first view appear difficult, and on that account a serious objection to the Bill; but when I come to that part of the subject, I pledge myself to shew that it involves no difficulty whatsoever. But there are other abuses far more frequent and important, which will require a more particular consideration. For one act of cruelty in servants, there are an hundred in the owners of beasts of labour and burthen, sometimes committed by the owners alone, from a scandalous desire of gain, and sometimes in a most unworthy partnership with their superiors, who are equally guilty, with no gain at all, nor for any motive that it would not be disgraceful to acknowledge. I allude, my Lords, to our unhappy posthorses. It is not my wish, my Lords, to

be a fanciful reformer of the world, nor to exact that the manners and customs of a highly-civilized nation should be brought to the standard of simplicity and virtue, if indeed such a standard ever existed upon earth. I do not seek to appoint inspectors to examine the books of innkeepers, so as to punish any excess in the numbers of their stages, as you do an excess of outside passengers on the roofs of coaches. I know there are very many cases (which could not be brought strictly within the scope of necessities) where these poor animals must grievously suffer, yet where no law can properly reach to protect thein. The demands, though not imminent, of human health, and even of convenience; the occasional exigencies of commerce; the exercise of franchises; and many other cases which must occur to every hody, would furnish obvious exceptions without violation of the principle, and which every court and magistrate would know how to distinguish. But the Bill, if properly executed, would expose innkeepers to a reasonable punishment, who will palpably devote an innocent animal to extreme misery, if not to death itself, by a manifest and outrageous excess of labour, rather than disoblige a mere traveller, engaged in no extraordinary business, lest in future he should go to the inn opposite-when the law shall give a rule for both sides of the way, this most infamous competition will be at an end.

For my own part, my Lords, I can say with the greatest sincerity to your Lordships, that nothing has ever excited in my mind greater disgust, than to observe what we all of us are obliged to see every day in our lives, horses pantingwhat do I say! literally dying under the scourge; when, on looking into the chaises, we see them carrying to and from London men and women, to whom, or to others, it can be of no possible signification whether they arrive one day sooner or later, and sometimes indeed whether they ever arrive at all. More than half the post-horses that die from abuse in harness, are killed by people, who, but for the mischief I am complaining of, would fall into the class described by Mr. Sterne, of simple or harmless travellers, galloping over our ads for neither good nor evil, but to fill up the dreary blank in unoccupied life. I can see no reason, why all such travellers should not enden vour to overcome the ennui of their lives, without killing poor animals, tore innocent and more useful than themselves.

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