CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

CONTENTS

TREATMENT OF ANIMALS.
FROM DAWN TO SUNSET.
A TYROLESE CATASTROPHE.
SINGING AND TALKING BY TELEGRAPH.
'HELEN'S BABIES' AND 'OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN.'
TEA-CULTURE IN INDIA.
PROFESSOR TYNDALL ON THE SPREAD OF DISEASE.

TREATMENT OF ANIMALS.

In our youthful days in the early years of the present century, little consideration was given to a systematic kindness to animals. Horses were overwrought without mercy, when ill-fed and with wounds which should have excited compassion. If they sunk down in their misery, they were left to die, the chances being that, in their last hours, they were inhumanly pelted with stones by boys;—no one, not even magistrates or clergymen, giving any concern to the cruelties that were perpetrated. All that we have seen, without exciting a word of remonstrance. A wretch who habitually turned out his old, overwrought, and half-starved horses to die on the town-green, never incurred any check or reprobation. His proceedings were viewed with perfect indifference. People, while passing along in a demure sort of way to church, would see a crowd of boys pitching stones into the wounds of a dying horse, and not one of these decorous church-goers endeavoured to stop these horrid acts of inhumanity. Like the Pharisees of old, they passed on the other side. Such within recollection is a small sample of the unchecked atrocities of our young days. Cats were pelted to death. Birds' nests were robbed. Dogs had kettles tied to their tail, and were hounded to madness by howling multitudes. Oxen were overdriven to an infuriated condition, and their frantic and revengeful career formed an acceptable subject of public amusement.

Barbarous in a certain sense as these comparatively recent times were, there had already been shewn instances of a kind consideration for animals. The poet Cowper, it will be recollected, wrote touchingly of the hares which he had domesticated. Sir Walter Scott's tender regard for his dogs has been recently noticed in these pages. There was here and there a glimmering consciousness that animals had some sort of claims on the mercy of mankind. What strikes one as curious is that society had retrograded in this respect. The oldest laws in the world, found in the early books of the Old Testament, enjoin a kind treatment of animals. If we see an ass fall which belongs to some one with whom we have a cause of difference, we are to throw aside private feelings, and hasten to help the animal. We are not to take a bird when sitting on its eggs, or on its young; a most humane injunction. In various texts the Hebrews were enjoined to have due regard for the comfort of the ox, the ass, or any other animal which laboured for them. In these venerable records, mercy is enjoined towards all living creatures.

The modern world, with all its pompous claims to civilisation, strangely drifted into an entire neglect of these beneficent obligations. Throughout Christendom, any laws enforcing a kind treatment of animals are few in number, and of very recent date. Even within our remembrance, clergymen were not usually in the habit of inculcating that species of kindness to domesticated creatures which we read of in the Old Testament; nor were children ordinarily taught lessons of humanity within the family circle. The oldest statutory laws concerning animals are those for the protection of game; but these laws proceeded on no principle of kindness. They were intended only to protect certain birds and quadrupeds during the breeding season, with a view to what is called 'sport,' the pleasure of killing them by licensed individuals—the license for indulging in this species of luxury being, as is well known, pretty costly. It is not our wish to hold up 'sport' of a legitimate kind to ridicule. The chief matter of regret is the coarse way in which game is sometimes pursued and killed even by licensed sportsmen: their operations in what is known as a battue, when vast numbers of animals are driven into narrow spaces, and shot down and maimed without mercy, being, as we think, no better than wholesale butchery; and not what might be expected from persons of taste and education.

Although in the early years of the present century there were no laws for the specific purpose of preventing cruelty to animals, thoughtful and humane persons were beginning to give attention to the subject. In 1809, Sir Charles Bunbury brought into the House of Commons a bill for the 'Prevention of wanton and malicious cruelty to Animals.' Mr Windham, a cabinet minister, little to his credit, opposed the bill, and it failed to pass. The next attempt at legislation on the subject was made by Lord Erskine in the House of Lords in 1810. His measure was opposed by Lord Ellenborough, and had to be withdrawn. There the matter rested until 1821, when Mr Richard Martin, member of parliament for Galway, brought a bill into the House of Commons for the 'Prevention of Cruelty to Horses.' It encountered torrents of ridicule, and after passing a second reading in a thin house, was no further proceeded with. Mr Martin, however, was not discouraged. He felt he was right, and returned to the encounter. In 1822, he introduced a new and more comprehensive bill. Instead of horses, he used the word 'cattle;' this bill passed through all its stages, and became an act of parliament. This act of 1822 was the first ever enacted against cruel and improper treatment of animals. Let there be every honour to the memory of Richard Martin for his noble struggle on behalf of defenceless creatures. In 1825, he brought in a bill for the suppression of bear-baiting and other cruel sports. Not without surprise do we learn that Sir Robert Peel met the bill with determined opposition, and that it was thrown out. To think that so eminent a statesman as Peel should have been a supporter of