“On the 7th June last there appeared in the ‘Macclesfield Guardian’ newspaper a letter on Rabies and the muzzling and confining of Dogs, signed ‘Beth-Gêlert.’ That communication contained several facts and opinions relating to the disease; the possible causes of the same; and the uselessness and cruelty of muzzling and confinement as a preventive to it. The first-named [[96]]unnatural practice has been condemned (as was there shown) by no less authority than the leading medical journal of England,—which has termed muzzling ‘a great practical mistake, and one which cannot fail to have an injurious effect both upon the health and temper of dogs; for, although rabies is a dreadful thing, dogs ought not, any more than men, to be constantly treated as creatures likely to go mad.’
“This information and judgment, however, seem insufficient to convince some minds, even although they have no observations or arguments to urge in opposition. It may be useful to the public to bring forward an opinion on the merits of that letter expressed by the late Thomas Turner, of Manchester, who was not only a member of the Council, but one of the ablest and most experienced surgeons in Europe. The words of so eminent a professional man cannot but be considered valuable, and must have weight with the sensible and sincere; though on men of an opposite character all evidence, all reason, is too often utterly cast away.
“Mosley Street, June 8, 1873.
“ ‘Dear ——,—Thanks for your sensible letter. It contains great and kind truths, and such as humanity should applaud. On the subject you write about there is a large amount of ignorance both in and out of the profession.
“Ever yours,
“Thomas Turner.’“In addition to the foregoing statement of the founder of the Manchester Royal School of Medicine and Surgery, the opinion shall now be given of one of the best veterinarians in London, who, writing on the above letter in the ‘Macclesfield Guardian,’ observed,—‘With regard to your paper on muzzling dogs, I feel certain from observation that the restraint put upon them by the muzzle is productive of evil, and has a tendency to cause fits, etc.’ [[97]]
“Rabies, originally spontaneous, was probably created, like many other evils which afflict humanity, by the viciousness, ignorance, and selfishness of man himself. ‘Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn,’—wrote the great peasant and national poet of Scotland. He would have uttered even a wider and more embracing truth had he said, man’s inhumanity to his fellow-creatures makes countless millions mourn. Rabies is most prevalent amongst the breeds of dogs bred and maintained for the atrocious sports of ‘the pit;’ they are likewise the most dangerous when victims to that dreadful malady. Moreover, dogs kept to worry other animals are also among those most liable to the disease, and the most to be feared when mad. But, on the other hand, dogs who live as the friends and companions of men of true humanity, and never exposed to annoyance or ill-treatment, remain gentle and affectionate even under the excruciating agonies of this dire disease. Delabere Blaine, first an army surgeon and subsequently the greatest veterinarian of this or probably of any other nation, tells us in his ‘Canine Pathology,’—
“ ‘It will sensibly affect any one to witness the earnest, imploring look I have often seen from the unhappy sufferers under this dreadful malady. The strongest attachment has been manifested to those around during their utmost sufferings; and the parched tongue has been carried over the hands and feet of those who noticed them, with more than usual fondness. This disposition has continued to the last moment of life,—in many cases, without one manifestation of any inclination to bite, or to do the smallest harm.’
“Here is another instance of ‘with whatsoever measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.’ The cruelty of man, as it ever does, recoils, like a viper, ultimately on man. He who invests in the Bank of Vice receives back his capital with compound interest at a high rate and to the uttermost farthing. [[98]]
“When a mad dog bites many people, he sometimes quits scores for a long, long arrear of brutalities, insults, and oppression inflicted upon him by the baser portion of mankind:—the hard blow, the savage kick, the loud curse, the vile annoyance, the insulting word, the starving meal, the carrion food, the shortened chain, the rotten straw, the dirty kennel (appropriate name), the bitter winter’s night, the parching heat of summer, the dull and dreary years of hopeless imprisonment, the thousand aches which patient merit of the unworthy takes, are represented, culminate there; and the cup man has poisoned, man is forced to drink.
“All these miseries are often, too often, the lot of this most affectionate creature, who has truly been called ‘our faithful friend, gallant protector, and useful servant.’
“No muzzling, murder, or incarceration tyrannically inflicted on this much-enduring, much-insulted slave by his master, will ever extirpate rabies. No abuse of the wondrous creature beneficently bestowed by the Omniscient and Almighty on ungrateful man, to be the friend of the poor and the guardian of the rich, will ever extirpate rabies. Mercy and justice would help us much more.
“In many lands the disease is utterly unknown,—in the land of Egypt, for example, where dogs swarm in all the towns and villages. Yet the follower of Mohammed, more humane than the follower of Christ,—to our shame be it spoken,—neither imprisons, muzzles, nor murders them. England, it is believed, never passed such an Act of Parliament as this before the present century. There is, certainly, in the laws of Canute a punishment awarded to the man whose dog went mad, and by his negligence wandered up and down the country. A far more sensible measure than our own. Canute punished the man, not the dog. Also, in Edward the Third’s reign, all owners of fighting dogs whose dogs were found wandering about the [[99]]streets of London were fined. Very different species of legislation from the brainless or brutal Dog’s Act of 1871, passed by a number of men, not one of whom it is probable either knew or cared to know anything of the nature of the creature they legislated about; not even that he perspires, not by means of his skin, but performs this vital function by means of his tongue, and that to muzzle him is tantamount to coating the skin of a man all over with paint or gutta-percha. Such selfishness and cruelty in this age appears to give evidence towards proof of the assertion made by our greatest writer on Art,—that ‘we are now getting cruel in our avarice,’—‘our hearts, of iron and clay, have hurled the Bible in the face of our God, and fallen down to grovel before Mammon.’—If not, how is it that we can so abuse one of the Supreme’s most choicest works,—a creature sent to be man’s friend, and whose devotion so often ‘puts to shame all human attachments’?
“We are reaping what we have sown: Rabies certainly seems on the increase in this district,—in whose neighbourhood, it is stated, muzzling was first practised. It may spread more widely if we force a crop. The best way to check it, is to do our duty to the noble creature the Almighty has entrusted to us, and treat him with the humanity and affection he so eminently deserves. To deprive him of liberty and exercise; to chain him like a felon; to debar him from access to his natural medicine; to prevent him from following the overpowering instincts of his being and the laws of Nature, is conduct revolting to reason and religion.
“The disease of rabies comes on by degrees, not suddenly. Its symptoms can easily be read. Were knowledge more diffused, people would know the approach of the malady, and take timely precautions. To do as we now do,—namely, drive the unhappy creatures insane, into an agonizing sickness by sheer ignorance or inhumanity, and then, because one is ill, [[100]]tie up the mouths of the healthy, and unnaturally restrain all the rest, is it not the conduct of idiots rather than of reasonable beings?
“Why all this hubbub about a disease which causes less loss of life than almost any other complaint known, and whose fatal effects can, in almost every case, be surely and certainly prevented by a surgeon? If our lawgivers and lawmakers (who, by the way, although the House of Commons is crowded with lawyers, do not in these times draw Acts of Parliament so that they can be comprehended, without the heavy cost of going to a superior court,) wish to save human life, let them educate the hearts as well as heads of Englishmen, and give more attention to boiler and colliery explosions, railway smashes, and rotten ships; to the overcrowding and misery of the poor; to the adulteration of food and medicines. Also, to dirt, municipal stupidity, and neglect; by which one city alone, Manchester, loses annually above three thousand lives.
“I am, your humble servant,
“Beth-Gelert.”
[[101]]
FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER XLI.
Paris, 1st April, 1874.
I find there are still primroses in Kent, and that it is possible still to see blue sky in London in the early morning. It was entirely pure as I drove down past my old Denmark Hill gate, bound for Cannon Street Station, on Monday morning last; gate, closed now on me for evermore, that used to open gladly enough when I came back to it from work in Italy. Now, father and mother and nurse all dead, and the roses of the spring, prime or late—what are they to me?
But I want to know, rather, what are they to you? What have you, workers in England, to do with April, or May, or June either; your mill-wheels go no faster for the sunshine, do they? and you can’t get more smoke up the chimneys because more sap goes up the trunks. Do you so much as know or care who May was, or her son, Shepherd of the heathen souls, so despised of you [[102]]Christians? Nevertheless, I have a word or two to say to you in the light of the hawthorn blossom, only you must read some rougher ones first. I have printed the June Fors together with this, because I want you to read the June one first, only the substance of it is not good for the May-time; but read it, and when you get to near the end, where it speaks of the distinctions between the sins of the hot heart and the cold, come back to this, for I want you to think in the flush of May what strength is in the flush of the heart also. You will find that in all my late books (during the last ten years) I have summed the needful virtue of men under the terms of gentleness and justice; gentleness being the virtue which distinguishes gentlemen from churls, and justice that which distinguishes honest men from rogues. Now gentleness may be defined as the Habit or State of Love; the Red Carita of Giotto (see account of her in Letter Seventh); and ungentleness or clownishness, the opposite State or Habit of Lust.
Now there are three great loves that rule the souls of men: the love of what is lovely in creatures, and of what is lovely in things, and what is lovely in report. And these three loves have each their relative corruption, a lust—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
And, as I have just said, a gentleman is distinguished from a churl by the purity of sentiment he can reach in all these three passions: by his imaginative love, as [[103]]opposed to lust; his imaginative possession of wealth as opposed to avarice; his imaginative desire of honour as opposed to pride.
And it is quite possible for the simplest workman or labourer for whom I write to understand what the feelings of a gentleman are, and share them, if he will; but the crisis and horror of this present time are that its desire of money, and the fulness of luxury dishonestly attainable by common persons, are gradually making churls of all men; and the nobler passions are not merely disbelieved, but even the conception of them seems ludicrous to the impotent churl mind; so that, to take only so poor an instance of them as my own life—because I have passed it in almsgiving, not in fortune-hunting; because I have laboured always for the honour of others, not my own, and have chosen rather to make men look to Turner and Luini, than to form or exhibit the skill of my own hand; because I have lowered my rents, and assured the comfortable lives of my poor tenants, instead of taking from them all I could force for the roofs they needed; because I love a wood walk better than a London street, and would rather watch a seagull fly than shoot it, and rather hear a thrush sing than eat it; finally, because I never disobeyed my mother, because I have honoured all women with solemn worship, and have been kind even to the unthankful and the evil; therefore the hacks of English art and literature wag their heads at me, and the poor wretch who pawns the dirty linen of his soul daily for a [[104]]bottle of sour wine and a cigar, talks of the “effeminate sentimentality of Ruskin.”