or the Repetition of the Law. (Ch. xxv. 4.) Thou shalt not muzzle when he the OX that treadeth out the corn. This is a precept of justice and mercy. The Cattle are upon the whole, the cheapest servants that we keep. They want neither our Money nor our Cloaths. Gold and Silver are of no more account with them, than the ftones of the ftreet. And as to Cloaths, they are provided by Nature with better and more durable garments than all the Art of Man can furnish them with. In this they have the advantage of us and if they were as capable of pride as Men are, they would put this endowment and array of nature into the balance, as more than a counterpoife to Solomon in all his Glory.

For

For let a man be ever fo well dreffed, his cloaths are but the covering of his fhame, and artificial fupplies for natural defects. Every ornament he wears to grace his perfon, is a tacit acknowlegement that without that ornament he would be lefs beautiful and amiable; and that in himself he is fo imperfect, that he stands in need of invented ornaments to fet him off. And even his neceffary cloaths are either taken from the ground which the cattle tread under their feet, or elfe are borrowed fkins, borrowed feathers, or borrowed hair. The creatures, which we defpife, wore them, before we had them, and could call them their own; whilft we are glad to be their heirs, and to wear L 3 them

them at fecond hand, when they have left them off: nor even then can we apply them to our use and fervice, without much contrivance and preparation.

But to the

Brutes their cloaths are fuitable to their wants; they are the endowments of Nature, and the gifts of GOD. And well for them it is, that Nature has in this inftance been fo bountiful and indulgent towards them; for if many of the cattle were as ill cloathed, as they are too often ill fed and hard wrought, they would be wretched creatures indeed.

FOOD is all the Wages, which the laboring Brutes expect or defire, for all their toil and drudgery in the fervice of Man; and to

deny

They afk

deny them Food is not only imprudent in the Master on his own account, but it is barbarous, wicked, and unjuft. only the Grass of your field, I mean the grass of the field; for You have no property in nature. We are only temporary tenants, with leave to take to our use the fruits of the earth. The foil is the property of GOD, the Lord Paramount of the Manor, who hath made the grass to grow for the CATTLE. The grafs of the field therefore is no gift of your's to them; it is their right; their property; it was provided for them, and given

*

to them, be

* And GOD faid-To every BEAST of the Earth-I have given every green Herb for Meat. Gen. i. 30.

fore MAN was created. And as Man cannot eat grafs, and the Beast asks for that only, which man cannot eat, to withhold or forbid it, is a robbery and a sin. Therefore if to gratify thine appetite or avarice, thou ploweft up one field, and to fave the fweat of thine own brow, inftead of digging it with a spade, makest ufe of the labor and ftrength of thy cattle to plow it for thee; in the name of gratitude and juftice, forget not thy benefactors, but allow them another field, or fomething equivalent to it, in lieu of that which you have taken from them. Muzzle not the Oxen, that tread out thy corn. Confider well, if the corn you fow and reap is thy corn, not their corn; the grafs

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