now finer sensations, there behooved to be duller and coarser sensibilities; and to as sort that eye, whose retina had become tenfold more soft and susceptible than before, its owner must be furnished with a heart of tenfold rigidity, and a nervous system as impregnable as iron,-that he might walk forth in ease and in complacency, while the conscious destroyer of millions by his tread, or the conscious devourer of a whole living and suffering hecatomb with every morsel of the sustenance which upheld him.

But, for the purpose of a nice and delicate balance between the actual feelings and faculties of our nature, something more is necessary than the imperfection of our outward senses. The bluntness of man's visual organs serves, no doubt, as a screen of protection against both the nausea and the horror of those many spectacles, which would else have either distressed or deteriorated the sensibilities that belong to him. But then, by help of the microscope, this screen can be occasionally lifted up; and what the eye then saw, the memory might retain, and the imagination might dwell upon, and the associating faculty might both constantly and vividly suggest; and thus, even in the absence of every provocative from without, the heart might be subjected either to a perpetual agitation, or a perpetual annoyance, by the meddling importunity of certain powers and activities which are within. It is not, therefore, an adequate defence of our species, against a very sore and hurtful molestation, that there should be a certain physical incapacity in our senses. There must, furthermore, be a certain physical inertness in our reflective faculties. In virtue of the former it is, that so many painful or disgusting objects are kept out of sight. But it seems indispensable to our happy or even tolerable existence, that, in virtue of the latter, these objects, when out of sight, should be also out of mind. In the one way, they lose their power to offend as objects of outward observation. In the other way, their power to haunt and to harass, by means of inward reflection, is also taken away. For the first purpose, Nature has struck with a certain impotency the organs of our material framework. For the second, she has infused, as it were, an opiate into the recesses of our mental economy, and made it of sufficient strength and sedative virtue for the needful tranquillity of man, and for upholding that average enjoyment in the midst both of agony and of loathsomeness, which either senses more acute, or a spirit more wakeful, must have effectually dissipated. It is to some such provision too, we think, that much of the heart's purity, as well as much of its tenderness is owing; and it is well that the

thoughts of the spirit should be kept, though even by the weight of its own lethargy, from too busy a converse with objects which are alike offensive or alike hazardous to both.

It is more properly with the second of these adaptations than the first, that our argument has to do-with the inertness of our reflective faculties, rather than with the incapacity of our senses. It is in be half of animals, and not of animalculæ, that we are called upon to address younot of that countless swarm, the agonies of whose destruction are shrouded from observation by the vail upon the sight; but of those creatures who move on the face of the open perspective before us, and not as the others in a region of invisibles, and yet whose dying agonies are shrouded almost as darkly and as densely from general observation, by the vail upon the mind. For you will perceive, that in reference to the latter vail, and by which it is that what is out of sight is also out of mind, its purpose is accomplished, whether the ob jects which are disguised by it be without the sphere of actual vision, or beneath the surface of possible vision. Now it is without the sphere of your actual, although not beneath the surface of your possible vision, where are transacted the dreadful mysteries of a slaughter-house, and more especially those lingering deaths which an animal has to undergo for the gratifications of a refined epicurism. It were surely most desirable that the duties, if they may be so called, of a most revolting trade, were all of them got over with the least possible expense of suffering; nor do we ever feel so painfully the impression of a lurking cannibalism in our nature, as when we think of the intense study which has been given to the connexion between modes of killing, and the flavour or delicacy of those viands which are served up to mild, and pacific, and gentle-looking creatures, who form the grace and the ornament of our polished society. One is almost tempted, after all, to look upon them as so many savages in disguise; and so, in truth, we should, but for the strength of that opiate whose power and whose property we have just endeavoured to explain; and in virtue of which, the guests of an entertainment are all the while most profoundly unconscious of the horrors of that preparatory scene which went before it. It is not, therefore, that there is. hypocrisy in these smiles wherewith they look so benignly to each other. It is not that there is deceit in their words or their accents of tenderness. The truth is, that one shriek of agony, if heard from without, would cast most impressive gloom over this scene of conviviality; and the sight, but for a moment, of one wretched creature quivering towards death, would,

with Gorgon spell, dissipate all the gaieties which enlivened it. But Nature, as it were, hath practised most subtle reticence, both on the senses and the spirit of her children; or rather, the Author of Nature hath, by the skill of his master hand, instituted the harmony of a most exquisite balance between the tenderness of the human feel-reckless of pain; but this is not rejoicing in ings and the listlessness of the human faculties, so as that, in the mysterious economy under which we live, he may at once provide for the sustenance, and leave entire the moral sensibilities of our species.

mit, is not once sympathized with; but it is just because the suffering itself is not once thought of. It touches not the sensibilities of the heart; but just because it is never present to the notice of the mind. We allow that the hardy followers in the wild romance of this occupation, we allow them to be pain. Theirs is not the delight of savage, but the apathy of unreflecting creatures. They are wholly occupied with the chase itself, and its spirit-stirring accompaniments, nor bestow one moment's thought on the dread violence of that infliction upon sentient nature which marks its termination. It is the spirit of the competition, and it alone, which goads onward this hurrying career; and even he, who in at the death, is foremost in the triumph, although to him the death itself is in sight, the agony of its wretched sufferer is wholly out of mind.

But there is a still more wondrous limitation than this, wherewith he hath bounded and beset the faculties of the human spirit. You already understand how it is, that the sufferings of the lower animals may, when out of sight, be out of mind. But more than this, these sufferings may be in sight, and yet out of mind. This is strikingly exemplified in the sports of the field, in the midst We are inclined to carry this principle of whose varied and animating bustle, that much farther. We are not even sure if, cruelty which all along is present to the within the whole compass of humanity, senses, may not, for one moment, have been | fallen as it is, there be such a thing as depresent to the thoughts. There sits a some- light in suffering, for its own sake. But, what ancestral dignity and glory on this without hazarding a controversy on this, favourite pastime of joyous old England; we hold it enough for every practical obwhen the gallant knighthood, and the hearty | jeet, that much, and perhaps the whole of yeomen, and the amateurs or virtuosos of this world's cruelty, arises not from the enthe chase, and the full assembled jockeyship joyment that is felt in consequence of others' of half a province, muster together in all pain, but from the enjoyment that is felt in the pride and pageantry of their great em- spite of it. It is something else in the specprize-and the panorama of some noble tacle of agony which ministers pleasure landscape, lighted up with autumnal clear- than the agony itself; and many is the eye ness from an unclouded heaven, pours fresh which glistens with transport at the fray of exhilaration into every blithe and choice animals met together for their mutual despirit of the scene-and every adventurous struction, and which might be brought to heart is braced, and impatient for the hazards weep, if, apart from all the excitements of of the coming enterprise-and even the such a scene, the anguish of wounded or high-breathed coursers catch the general dying creatures were placed nakedly before sympathy, and seem to fret in all the res- it. Were it strictly analyzed, it would be tiveness of their yet checked and irritated found that the charm, neither of the ancient fire, till the echoing horn shall set them at gladiatorships, nor of our modern prizeliberty-even that horn which is the knell fights, lies in the torture which is thereby of death to some trembling victim, now inflicted; for we should feel the very same brought forth of its lurking place to the charm, and look with the very same intentdelighted gaze, and borne down upon withness, on some doubtful, yet strenuous collithe full and open cry of its ruthless pursuers. Be assured that, amid the whole glee and fervency of this tumultuous enjoyment, there might not, in one single bosom, be aught so fiendish as a principle of naked and abstract cruelty. The fear which gives its lightning speed to the unhappy animal; the thickening horrors which, in the progress of exhaustion, must gather upon its flight; its gradually sinking energies, and, at length, the terrible certainty of that destruction which is awaiting it; that piteous cry, which the ear can sometimes distinguish amid the deafening clamour of the blood-hounds, as they spring exultingly upon their prey; the dread massacre and dying agonies of a creature so miserably torn-all this weight of suffering, we ad

sion, even among the inanimate elements of nature-as, when the water and the fire contended for mastery, and the inherent force of the one was met by a plying and a powerful enginery that gave impulse and direction to the other. It is even so, when the enginery of bones and of muscles comes into rivalship; and every spectator of the ring fastens on the spectacle with that identical engrossment which he feels in the hazards of some doubtful game, or in the desperate conflict and effervescence even of the altogether mute unconscious elements. To him it is little else than a problem in dynamics. There is a science connected with the fight, which has displaced the sen sibilities that are connected with its expiring moans, its piteous and piercing outcries, its

h

cruel lacerations. In all this, we admit the
utter heedlessness of pain; but we are not
sure if even yet there be aught so hellishly
revolting as any positive gratification in the
pain itself--or whether, even in the lowest
walks of black guardism in society, it do not
also hold, that when sufferings even unto
death are fully in sight, the pain of these
sufferings is as fully out of mind.

effort, and of great strenuousness, to keep
them down; and his heart is differently af
fected from that of other men, just because
the regards of his mental eye are differently
pointed from those of other men. The whole
bent and engagement of his faculties are
similar to those of another operator who is
busied with the treatment of a piece of in-
animate matter, and may almost be said to
But the term science, so strangely applied subject it to the torture, when he puts it in
as it has been in the example now quoted, the intensely heated crucible, or applies to
reminds us of another variety in this most it the test, and the various searching opera-
afflicting detail. Even in the purely academic tions of a laboratory. The one watches
walk we read or hear of the most appalling every change of hue in the substance upon
cruelties; and the interest of that philosophy which he operates, and waits for the re-
wherewith they have been associated, has sponse which is given forth by a spark, or
been plead in mitigation of them. And just an effervescence, or an explosion; and the
as the moral debasement incurred by an act other, precisely similar to him, watches
of theft is somewhat redeemed, if done by every change of aspect in the suffering or
one of Science's enamoured worshippers, dying creature that is before him, and marks
when, overcome by the mere passion of every symptom of its exhaustion, or sorer
connoisseurship, he puts forth his hand on distress, every throb of renewed anguish,
some choice specimen of most tempting and every cry, and every look of that pain which
irresistible peculiarity-even so has a like it can feel, though not articulate; marks
indulgence been extended to certain perpe- and considers these in no other light than
trators of stoutest and most resolved cruelty; as the exponents of its variously affected
and that just because of the halo wherewith physiology. But still, could merely the
the glories of intellect and of proud discovery same interesting phenomena have been
have enshrined them. And thus it is, that, evolved without pain, he would like it bet
bent on the scrutiny of nature's laws, there ter. Only he will not be repelled from the
are some of our race who have hardihood study of them by pain. Even he would
enough to explore and elicit them at the ex- have had more comfort in the study of a
pense of dreadest suffering-who can make complex automaton, that gave out the same
some quaking, some quivering animal, the results on the same application. Only, he
subject of their hapless experiment-who will not shrink from the necessary incisions,
can institute a questionary process by which and openings, and separation of parts, al-
to draw out the secrets of its constitution, though, instead of a lifeless automaton, it
and, like inquisitors of old, extract every should be a sentient and sorely agonized
reply by an instrument of torture-who can animal. So that there is not even with him
probe their unfaltering way among the any reversal of the law of sympathy. There
vitalities of a system which shrinks, and may be the feebleness, or there may be the
palpitates, and gives forth, at every move-negation of it. Certain it is, that it has given
ment of their steadfast hand, the pulsations way to other laws of superior force in his
of deepest agony; and all, perhaps, to ascer- constitution. And, without imputing to him
tain and to classify the phenomena of sen-aught so monstrous as the positive love of
sation, or to measure the tenacity of animal suffering, we may even admit for him a
life, by the power and exquisiteness of ani-hatred of suffering, but that the love of
mal endurance. And still, it is not because science had overborne it.
of all this wretchedness, but in spite of it, In the views that we have now given, and
that they pursue their barbarous occupation. which we deem of advantage for the right
Even here it is possible, that there is nought practical treatment of our question, it may
so absolutely Satanic as delight in those suf-be conceived that we palliate the atrocious-
ferings of which themselves are the inflict-ness of cruelty. It is forgotten, that a charge
That law of emotion by which the of foulest delinquency may be made up
sight of pain calls forth sympathy, may not together of wants or of negatives; and, just
be reversed into an opposite law, by which as the human face, by the mere want of
the sight of pain would call forth satisfaction some of its features, although there should
or pleasure. The emotion is not reversed-not be any inversion of them, might be an
it is only overborne, in the play of other object of utter loathsomeness to beholders,
emotions, called forth by other objects. He so the human character, by the mere ab-
is intent on the science of those phenomena
which he investigates, and bethinks not
himself of the suffering which they involve
to the unhappy animal. So far from the
sympathies of his nature being reversed, or
even annihilated, there is in most cases an

ers.

al

sence of certain habits, or certain sensibili ties, which belong ordinarily and constitu tionally to our species, may be an object of utter abomination in society. The want of natural affection forms one article of the Apostle's indictment against our world; and

culty of attention, which might have opened the door, through which suffering without finds its way to sympathy within, is otherwise engaged; and the precise charge, on which either morality can rightfully condemn, or humanity be offended, is, that he wills to have it so.

It may be illustrated by that competition of speed which is held, with busy appliance of whip and of spur, betwixt animals. A similar competition can be imagined between steam-carriages, when, either to preserve the distance which has been gained, or to recover the distance which has been lost, the respective guides would keep up an incessant appliance to the furnace, and the safety-valve. Now, the sport and the excitement are the same, whether this appliance of force be to a dead or a living mechanism; and the enormity of the latter does not lie in any direct pleasure which is felt in the exhaustion, or the soreness, or, finally, in the death of the over-driven animal. If these awake any feeling at all in the barbarous rider, it is that of pain; and it is either the want or the weakness of this latter feeling, and not the presence of its opposite, which constitutes him a barbarian. He does not rejoice in animal suffering-but it is enough to bring down upon him the charge of barbarity, that he does not regard it.

certain it is, that the total want of it were stigma enough for the designation of a monster. The mere want of religion, or irreligion, is enough to make man an outcast from his God. Even to the most barbarous of our kind you apply, not the term of antihumanity, but of inhumanity-not the term of antisensibility: and you hold it enough for the purpose of branding him for general execration, that you convicted him of complete and total insensibility. He is regaled, it is true, by a spectacle of agony-but not because of the agony. It is something else, therewith associated, which regales him. But still he is rightfully the subject of most emphatic denunciation, not because regaled by, but because regardless of, the agony. We do not feel ourselves to be vindicating the cruel man, when we affirm it to be not altogether certain, whether he rejoices in the extinction of life; for we count it a deep atrocity, that, unlike to the righteous man of our text, he simply does not regard the life of a beast. You may perhaps have been accustomed to look upon the negatives of character, as making up a sort of neutral or midway innocence. But this is a mistake. Unfeeling is but a negative quality; and yet, we speak of an unfeeling monster. It is thus that even the profound experimentalist, whose delight is not in the torture which he inflicts, but in the truth which he elicits But these introductory remarks, although thereby, may become an object of keenest they lead, I do think, to some most imreprobation not because he was pleased portant suggestions for the management of with suffering, but simply because he did the evil, yet they serve not to abate its apnot pity it-not because the object of pain, palling magnitude. Man is the direct agent if dwelt upon by him, would be followed of a wide and continual distress to the lower up by any other emotion than that which animals, and the question is, Can any meis experienced by other men, but because, thod be devised for its alleviation? On this intent on the prosecution of another object, subject that scriptural image is strikingly reit was not so dwelt upon. It is found that alized, "The whole inferior creation groanthe eclat even of brilliant discovery does ing and travailing together in pain," because not shield him from the execrations of a of him. It signifies not to the substantive public, who can yet convict him of nothing amount of the suffering, whether this be more than simply of negatives-of heed-prompted by the hardness of his heart, or lessness, of heartlessness, of looking upon only permitted through the heedlessness of the agonies of a sentient creature without his mind. In either way it holds true, not regard, and therefore without sensibility. only that the arch-devourer man stands The true principle of his condemnation is, pre-eminent over the fiercest children of the that he ought to have regarded. It is not wilderness as an animal of prey, but that for that, in virtue of a different organic struc- his lordly and luxurious appetite, as well as ture, he feels differently from others, when for his service or merest curiosity and amusethe same simple object is brought to bear ment, Nature must be ransacked throughout upon him. But it is, that he resolutely kept all her elements. Rather than forego the that object at a distance from his attention, veriest gratifications of vanity, he will wring or rather, that he steadily kept his attention them from the anguish of wretched and illaway from the object; and that, in opposi- | fated creatures; and whether for the indulsition to all the weight of remonstrance gence of his barbaric sensuality, or barbaric which lies in the tremours, and the writh- splendour, can stalk paramount over the ings, and the piteous outcries of agonized sufferings of that prostrate creation which Nature. Had we obtained for these the re- has been placed beneath his feet. That gards of his mind, the relentings of his heart beauteous domain whereof he has been conmight have followed. His is not an anoma-stituted the terrestrial sovereign, gives out lous heart; and the only way in which he so many blissful and benignant aspects; and can brace it into sternness, is by barricad- whether we look to its peaceful lakes, or its ing the avenue which leads to it. That fa-flowery landscapes, or its evening skies, or

to all that soft attire which overspreads the hills and the valleys, lighted up by smiles of sweetest sunshine, and where animals disport themselves in all the exuberance of gaiety-this surely were a more befitting scene for the rule of clemency, than for the iron rod of a murderous and remorseless tyrant. But the present is a mysterious world wherein we dwell. It still bears much upon its materialism of the impress of Paradise. But a breath from the air of Pandemonium has gone over its living generations. And so "the fear of man, and the dread of man, is now upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into man's hands are they delivered: every moving thing that liveth is meat for him; yea, even as the green herbs, there have been given to him all things." Such is the extent of his jurisdiction, and with most full and wanton license has he revelled among its privileges. The whole earth labours and is in violence because of his cruelties; and, from the amphitheatre of sentient Nature, there sounds in fancy's ear the bleat of one wide and universal suffering,-a dreadful homage to the power of Nature's constituted lord.

subject of our own species, there stands forth to view the same sentient apparatus, and furnished with the same conductors for the transmission of feeling to every minutest pore upon the surface. Theirs is unmixed and unmitigated pain-the agonies of martyrdom, without the alleviation of the hopes and the sentiments, whereof they are incapable. When they lay them down to die, their only fellowship is with suffering, for in the prison-house of their beset and bounded faculties, there can no relief be afforded by communion with other interests or other things. The attention does not lighten their distress as it does that of man, by carrying off his spirit from that existing pungency and pressure which might else be overwhelming. There is but room in their mysterious economy for one inmate; and that is, the absorbing sense of their own single and concentrated anguish. And so in that bed of torment, whereon the wounded animal lingers and expires, there is an unexplored depth and intensity of suffering which the poor dumb animal itself cannot tell, and against which it can offer no remonstrance; an untold and unknown amount of wretchedness, of which no articulate voice gives utterance. But there is an eloquence in its silence; and the very shroud which disguises it, only serves to aggravate its horrors.

We now come to the practical treatment of this question-to the right method of which, we hold the views that are now offered to be directly and obviously subservient.

These sufferings are really felt. The beasts of the field are not so many automata without sensation, and just so constructed as to give forth all the natural signs and expressions of it. Nature has not practised this universal deception upon our species. These poor animals just look, and tremble, and give forth the very indications of suf- First, then, upon this subject, we should fering that we do. Theirs is the distinct cry hold no doubtful casuistry. We should adof pain. Theirs is the unequivocal physiog-vance no pragmatic or controversial docnomy of pain. They put on the same aspect of terror on the demonstrations of a menacing blow. They exhibit the same distortions of agony after the infliction of it. The bruise, or the burn, or the fracture, or the deep incision, or the fierce encounter with one of equal or superior strength, just affects them similarly to ourselves. Their blood circulates as ours. They have pulsations in various parts of the body like ours. They sicken, and they grow feeble with age, and, finally, they die just as we do. They possess the same feelings; and what exposes them to like suffering from another quarter, they possess the same instincts with our own species. The lioness robbed of her whelps causes the wilderness to ring aloud with the proclamation of her wrongs; or the bird whose little household has been stolen, fills and saddens all the grove with melodies of deepest pathos. All this is palpable even to the general and unlearned eye; and when the physiologist lays open the recesses of their system by means of that scalpel, under whose operation they just shrink and are convulsed as any living

trine. We should carefully abstain from all such ambiguous or questionable posi tions, as the unlawfulness of animal food, or the unlawfulness of animal experiments. We should not even deem it the right tactics for this moral warfare, to take up the position of the unlawfulness of field-sports, or yet the unlawfulness of those competi tions, whether of strength or of speed, which at one time on the turf, and at another in the ring, are held forth to the view of assembled spectators. We are aware that some of these positions are not so questionable, yet we should refrain from the elaboration of them; for we hold, that this is not the way by which we shall most ef fectually make head against the existing cruelties of our land. The moral force by which our cause is to be advanced, does not lie even in the soundest categories of an ethical jurisprudence-and far less in the dogmata of any paltry sectarianism. We have almost as little inclination for the controversy which respects animal food, as we have for the controversy about the eating of blood; and this, we repeat, is not the