“I have kept strictly, ever since, to this method of fleeing from the sight of cruelty, wherever I could find ground-room for it; and I make no manner of doubt, that I have more than once escaped the horns of a Mad Ox, as all of that species are called, that do not choose to be tortured as well as killed. But, on the other hand, these escapes of mine have very frequently run me into great inconveniences. I have sometimes been led into such a series of blind alleys, that it has been matter of great difficulty to me to find my way out of them. I have been betrayed by my hurry into the middle of a market—the proper residence of Inhumanity. I have paid many a six-and-eightpence for non-appearance at the hour my lawyer had appointed for business; and, what would hurt some people worse than all the rest, I have frequently arrived too late for the dinners I have been invited to at the houses of my friends.
“All these difficulties and distresses, I began to flatter myself, were going to be removed, and that I should be left at liberty to pursue my walks through the straightest and broadest streets, when Mr. Hogarth first published his Prints upon the subject of Cruelty.[306] But whatever success so much ingenuity, founded upon so much humanity, might deserve, all the hopes I had built of seeing a Reformation, proved vain and fruitless. I am sorry to say it, but there still remain in the streets of this metropolis, more scenes of Barbarity than, perhaps, are to be met with in all Europe besides. Asia (at least in the larger population of it—the Hindus) is well known for compassion to ‘brutes’; and nobody who has read Busbequius, will wonder at me for most heartily wishing that our common people were no crueller than Turks.
“I should have apprehensions of being laughed at, were I to complain of want of compassion in our Laws [!]; the very word seeming contradictory to any idea of it. But I will venture to own that to me it appears strange, that the men against whom I should be enabled to bring an action for laying a little dirt at my door, may, with impunity, drive by it half-a-dozen Calves, with their tails lopped close to their bodies and their hinder parts covered with blood....
“To conclude this subject—as I cannot but join in opinion with Mr. Hogarth, that the frequency of murders among us is greatly owing to those scenes of Cruelty, which the lower ranks of people are so much accustomed to; instead of multiplying such scenes, I should rather hope that some proper method might be fixed upon either for preventing them, or removing them out of sight; so that our infants might not grow up into the world in a familiarity with blood.
“If we may believe the Naturalists, that a Lion is a gentle animal until his tongue has been dipped in blood, what precaution ought we to use to prevent MAN from being inured to it, who has such superiority of power to do mischief.”—The World, No. LXI., Aug. 19, 1756.
XII.
JENYNS. 1704–1787.
A SUPPORTER of the Walpole Administration, he represented the county of Cambridge, and during twenty-five years held the office of Commissioner of the Board of Trade. He wrote papers in The World and other periodicals, and published two volumes of Poems. His principal book is the Free Enquiry into the Origin of Evil, in which he seeks to reconcile the obvious evils in the constitution of things with his optimistic creed. Johnson, who, with all his orthodoxy, was pessimistic, severely criticised this apology for Theism. In striking contrast with the indifferentism of the vast majority of his class, his just and humane feeling is sufficiently remarkable. The line of reasoning, in his comprehensive arraignment of the various atrocities perpetrated, sanctioned, or condoned by English Society or English Law in the last century, and which, for the most part, still continue (it is scarcely necessary to add), logically leads to the abolition of the Slaughter-House—the fountain and origin of the evil:—
“How will Man, that sanguinary Tyrant, be able to excuse himself from the charge of those innumerable cruelties inflicted on his unoffending subjects, committed to his care, and placed under his authority, by their common father? To what horrid deviations from these benevolent intentions are we daily witnesses! No small part of Mankind derive their chief amusement from the deaths and sufferings of inferior Animals. A much greater part still, consider them only as engines of wood or iron, useful in their several occupations. The Carman drives his Horse as the Carpenter his nail by repeated blows; and so long as these produce the desired effect, and they both go, they neither reflect nor care whether either of them have any sense of feeling.
“The Butcher knocks down the stately Ox with no more compassion than the Blacksmith hammers a horse-shoe, and plunges his knife into the throat of the innocent Lamb with as little reluctance as the Tailor sticks his needle into the collar of a coat.[307] If there are some few who, formed in a softer mould, view with pity the sufferings of these defenceless beings, there is scarce one who entertains the least idea that Justice or Gratitude can be due to their Merits or their Services.