[123] Ibid. p. 546.
[124] Strafgesetzbuch, § 360 (13).
Indifference to animal suffering has been a characteristic of public opinion in European countries up to quite modern times. Only a little more than a hundred years ago Thomas Young declared in his ‘Essay on Humanity to Animals’ that he was sensible of laying himself open to no small portion of ridicule in offering to the public a book on such a subject.[125] Till the end of the eighteenth century and even later cock-fighting was a very general amusement among the English and Scotch, entering into the occupations of both the old and young. Travellers agreed with coachmen that they were to wait a night if there was a cock-fight in any town through which they passed. Schools had their cock-fights; on Shrove Tuesday every youth took to the village schoolroom a cock reared for his special use, and the schoolmaster presided at the conflict.[126] Those who felt that the practice required some excuse found it in the idea that the race was to suffer this annual barbarity by way of punishment for St. Peter’s crime;[127] but the number of people who had any scruples about the game cannot have been great considering that even such a strong advocate of humanity to animals as Lawrence had no decided antipathy to it.[128] Other pastimes indulged in were dog-fighting, bull-baiting and badger-baiting; and in the middle of the eighteenth century the bear-garden was described by Lord Kames as one of the chief entertainments of the English, though it was held in abhorrence by the French and “other polite nations,” being too savage an amusement to be relished by those of a refined taste.[129] As late as 1824 Sir Robert (then Mr.) Peel argued strongly against the legal prohibition of bull-baiting.[130]
[125] Young, Essay on Humanity to Animals, p. 1.
[126] Roberts, Social History of the People of the Southern Counties of England, p. 421 sqq. Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, ii. 340. In 1856, when Roberts wrote his book, cock-penance was still paid in some English grammar schools to the master as a perquisite on Shrove Tuesday (Roberts, p. 423).
[127] Roberts, op. cit. p. 422.
[128] Lawrence, Philosophical and Practical Treatise on Horses, ii. 12.
[129] Kames, Essays on the Principles of Morality, p. 7.
[130] Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, New Series, x. 491 sqq.
About two years previously, however, humanity to animals had, for the first time, become a subject of English legislation by the Act which prevented cruel and improper treatment of cattle.[131] This Act was afterwards followed by others which prohibited bear-baiting, cock-fighting, and similar pastimes, as also cruelty to domestic animals in general. In 1876 vivisection for medical or scientific purposes was subjected to a variety of restrictions, and since 1900 cases of ill-treatment of wild animals in captivity may be dealt with under the Wild Animals in Captivity Protection Act.[132] On the Continent cruelty to animals was first prohibited by criminal law in Saxony, in 1838,[133] and subsequently in most other European states. But in the South of Europe there are still countries in which the law is entirely silent on the subject.[134]