“That lies beneath the knife,
Looks up, and from her butcher begs her life.”
Æn. VII. (Pope’s translation.) Quoted first by Montaigne. Essais.
[303] And, Pope might have added, a more diabolical torture still—calves bled to death by a slow and lingering process—hung up (as they often are) head downwards. Although not universal as it was some ten years ago, this, among other Christian practices, yet flourishes in many parts of the country, unchecked by legal intervention.
[304] See Article, Plutarch, above.
[305] So far, at least, as the natural and necessary wants of each species are concerned.—That “Nature” is regardless of suffering, is but too apparent in all parts of our globe. It is the opprobrium and shame of the human species that, placed at the head of the various races of beings, it has hitherto been the Tyrant, and not the Pacificator.
[306] The Four Stages of Cruelty, in which, beginning with the torture of other animals, the legitimate sequence is fulfilled in the murder of the torturer’s mistress or wife.
[307] Which is the accomplice really guilty? The ignorant, untaught, wretch who has to gain his living some way or other, or those who have been entrusted with, or who have assumed, the control of the public conscience—the statesman, the clergy, and the schoolmaster? Undoubtedly it is upon these that almost all the guilt lies, and always will lie.
[308] Bull-baiting, in this country, has been for some years illegal; but that moralists, and other writers of the present day, while boasting the abolition of that popular pastime, are silent, upon the equally barbarous, if more fashionable sports of Deer-hunting, &c., is one of those inconsistencies in logic which are as unaccountable as they are common.
[309] “That is,” remarks Ritson, “in a state of Society influenced by Superstition, Pride, and a variety of prejudices equally unnatural and absurd.”