MOTTO.

ALL ARE BUT PARTS OF ONE STUPENDOUS WHOLE.

INTRODUCTION.

MAN was made for society.

There his most important

duties were to be performed, and there his best pleasures await him. In order to prepare him for the situation in which he was to be placed, there was impressed on his nature a strong sympathy with the weal and woe of those around him. He must, indeed, be degraded and debased far below the common level, who feels no pleasure when those around him are happy; or who is altogether void of compassion when his friends or his neighbours, or even strangers, suffer. There is in the lowest of the low, in their best hours at least, a degree of exultation when all is happy about them, and an honest burst of indignation when a base or cruel action is perpetrated. Hence the derivation of the words humane and humanity, from homo, a man. They are opposed to cruelty, or a fondness for or habit of inflicting pain; and they are so opposed, because he who coolly and habitually can be guilty of cruelty is devoid of one of the most important and elevated characteristics of our nature :— Each social feeling lost,

While joyless inhumanity pervades

And petrifies the heart.

To love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity. In the religion which we profess it has received the sanction of a divine command: but it is also the great law of nature, and may be legitimately traced to that sympathy with the pleasures and pains of others which is implanted in every breast.

B

The claims of humanity, however they may be neglected or outraged in a variety of respects, are recognized by every ethical writer. They are truly founded on reason and on scripture, and, in fact, are indelibly engraven on the human heart.

Το

But to what degree are they recognized and obeyed? what extent are they inculcated, not only in many excellent treatises on moral philosophy, but by the great majority of the expounders of the scriptures? We answer with shame, and with an astonishment that increases upon us in proportion as we think of the subject, the duties of humanity are represented as extending to our fellow men, to the victim of oppression or misfortune, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the slave, the beggared prodigal, and even the convicted felon all these receive more or less sympathy; but, with exceptions, few and far between, not a writer pleads for the innocent and serviceable creatures-brutes, as they are termed that minister to our wants, natural or artificial.

Nevertheless, the claims of the lower animals to humane treatment, or, at least, to exemption from abuse, åre as good as any that man can urge upon man. Although less intelligent, and not immortal, they are susceptible of pain: but because they cannot remonstrate, nor associate with their fellows in defence of their rights, our best theologians and philosophers have not condescended to plead their cause, or even to make mention of them; although, as just asserted, they have as much right to protection from ill usage as the best of their masters have.

Nay! the matter has been carried further than this. At no very distant period, the right of wantonly torturing the inferior animals, as caprice or passion dictated, was unblushingly claimed; and it was asserted that the prevention of this was an interference with the rights and liberties of man!! Strange that, at the beginning of the 19th century, this should have been the avowed opinion of some of the British legislators; and that the advocate of the claims of the brute should have been regarded as a fool or a madman, or a compound of both.

The President of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty has well expressed this in his opening address, at the annual general meeting in May 1837: "Those who were members of this Society in the early stages of its existence, know the difficulties which arose like mountains in our path. They know that a distant and darkling light was all that we had to cheer us along our dim and obscure path. Thank God! that solitary beam is now a wide stream of light, which has ripened into perfect day.

"The Society has now no mass of individuals arrayed against it, alarmed at the scheme in favour of the animal world. The lukewarm indifference of some, and the brutal scorn displayed by others, are gone; and he who professes to honour his Maker no longer dares openly to sanction cruelty to the brute creation. Even those who have not improved with the improving spirit of the day have changed their tone, and veil their heartlessness under an assumed belief that human aid to restrain human tyranny can be of no avail. The foolish notion has passed away, that to prevent cruelty is to interfere with the liberty and to debase the manly spirit of the British nation. The real fact is this, that no party feeling is to be gratified, no party object to be achieved by advocating this honourable cause; but a new and generous principle of civilization and of humanity is to be attained and diffused. The pure sincere advocacy of the animal world is passionless and disinterested; working out that beautiful principle of Christian charity, which, having been given to man in perfect love, is thus to be extended to the meanest of God's creatures*."

Nothing can be added to this eloquent description of the object and progress of "The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals." Many well-written and affecting appeals have been made to the members of the Society, and to the public, in the little pamphlets which it widely distributes; but its numbers and its influence having so rapidly increased, "a benevolent friend to the cause of humanity" was naturally anxious that its principles should be yet more distinctly stated

* Annual Report, 1837, p. 16,

and enforced; that the obligation of man as regards the brute creation should be more plainly and systematically explained; and that the great duties of humanity should be brought home to the business and bosoms of men moving in the various ranks of society, and in different ways connected with the enjoyment or the suffering of the inferior animals. The writer of this Essay having for many a year been devoted to the cause to which this "benevolent friend" wishes so well, and having had somewhat extensive opportunity of becoming acquainted with the capabilities, and uses, and deserts, and treatment of most of our domesticated animals, with some diffidence answers to the call. He will not appeal to the passions-he will not so far degrade the noble subject which he approaches. He makes no pretensions to any extraordinary degree of humanity; he boasts not of acuter feelings than his neighbours: but he will calmly state that which he has seen and thought; and thus, perhaps, win some few of his readers to the more consistent practice of that "humanity to the brute which is harmonious with the spirit and doctrines of Christianity, and the duty of man as a rational and accountable creature."

THE OBLIGATION OF

HUMANITY TO ANIMALS,

AS FOUNDED ON THE SCRIPTURES.

IT has been well said, that knowledge is power; and there could be no doubt that the superior intellectual faculties of man would soon reduce to partial or complete subjection the various animals by which he was surrounded. No great time would elapse ere he would be the master, and they his slaves, unless they avoided that subjugation by retreating to deserts which his feet rarely or never trod. That, however, which would have been the natural and not distant result of things, was hastened and confirmed by a divine ordinance: and when the earth had brought forth "the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind," and the almighty Maker had seen "that it was good, God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; and God blessed him, and said unto him, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good*." Again, when, after the flood, Noah and his family came out of the ark, this delegation of power was repeated. "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and

* Gen. i, 24-28.