PHILOSOPHY OF THE BULL-FIGHT.
The efficacy of such sports for sustaining a martial spirit was disproved by the degeneracy of the Romans at the time when bloody spectacles were most in vogue; nor are bravery and humanity the characteristics of the bull-fighting Spaniards in the collective. We ourselves do not attribute their “merciless skivering and skewering,” their flogging and murdering women, to the bull-fight, the practical result of which has been overrated and misunderstood. Cruel it undoubtedly is, and perfectly congenial to the inherent, inveterate ferocity of Iberian character, but it is an effect rather than a cause—with doubtless some reciprocating action; and it may be questioned, whether the original bull-fight had not a greater tendency to humanise, than the Olympic games; certainly the Fiesta real of the feudal ages combined the associated ideas of religion and loyalty, while the chivalrous combat nurtured a nice sense of personal honour and a respectful gallantry to women, which were unknown to the polished Greeks or warlike Romans; and many of the finest features of Spanish character have degenerated since the discontinuance of the original fight, which was more bloody and fatal than the present one.
The Spaniards invariably bring forward our boxing-matches in self-justification, as if a tu quoque could be so; but it must always be remembered in our excuse that these are discountenanced by the good and respectable, and legally stigmatised as breaches of the peace; although disgraced by beastly drunkenness, brutal vulgarity, ruinous gambling and betting, from which the Spanish arena is exempt, as no bull yet has been backed to kill so many horses or not; our matches, however, are based on a spirit of fair play which forms no principle of the Punic politics, warfare, or bull-fighting of Spain. The Plaza there is patronised by church and state, to whom, in justice, the responsibility of evil consequences must be referred. The show is conducted with great ceremonial, combining many elements of poetry, the beautiful and sublime; insomuch that a Spanish author proudly says: “When the countless assembly is honoured by the presence of our august monarchs, the world is lost in admiration at the majestic spectacle afforded by the happiest people in the world, enjoying with rapture an exhibition peculiarly their own, and offering to their idolised sovereigns the due homage of the truest and most refined loyalty;” and it is impossible to deny the magnificent coup d’œil of the assembled thousands. Under such conflicting circumstances, we turn away our eyes during moments of painful detail which are lost in the poetical ferocity of the whole, for the interest of the tragedy of real death is undeniable, irresistible, and all absorbing.
PHILOSOPHY OF THE BULL-FIGHT.
The Spaniards seem almost unconscious of the cruelty of those details which are most offensive to a stranger. They are reconciled by habit, as we are to the bleeding butchers’ shops which disfigure our gay streets, and which if seen for the first time would be inexpressibly disgusting. The feeling of the chase, that remnant of the savage, rules in the arena, and mankind has never been nice or tender-hearted in regard to the sufferings of animals, when influenced by the destructive propensities. In England no sympathy is shown for game,—fish, flesh, or fowl; nor for vermin—stoats, kites, or poachers. The end of the sport is—death; the amusement is the playing, the fine run, as the prolongation of animal suffering is termed in the tender vocabulary of the Nimrods; the pang of mortal sufferance is not regulated by the size of the victim; the bull moreover is always put at once out of his misery, and never exposed to the thousand lingering deaths of the poor wounded hare; therefore we must not see a toro in Spanish eyes and wink at the fox in our own, nor
“Compound for vices we’re inclined to
By damning those we have no mind to.”
It is not clear that animal suffering on the whole predominates over animal happiness. The bull roams in ample pastures, through a youth and manhood free from toil, and when killed in the plaza only anticipates by a few months the certain fate of the imprisoned, over-laboured, mutilated ox.
In Spain, where capital is scanty, person and property insecure (evils not quite corrected since the late democratic reforms), no one would adventure on the speculation of breeding cattle on a large scale, where the return is so distant, without the certain demand and sale created by the amphitheatre; and as a small proportion only of the produce possess the requisite qualifications, the surplus and females go to the plough and market, and can be sold cheaper from the profit made on the bulls. Spanish political economists proved that many valuable animals were wasted in the arena—but their theories vanished before the fact, that the supply of cattle was rapidly diminished when bull-fights were suppressed. Similar results take place as regards the breed of horses, though in a minor degree; those, moreover, which are sold to the Plaza would never be bought by any one else. With respect to the loss of human life, in no land is a man worth so little as in Spain; and more English aldermen are killed indirectly by turtles, than Andalucian picadors directly by bulls; while, as to time, these exhibitions always take place on holidays, which even industrious Britons bouse away occasionally in pothouses, and idle Spaniards invariably smoke out in sunshiny dolce far niente. The attendance, again, of idle spectators prevents idleness in the numerous classes employed directly and indirectly in getting up and carrying out this expensive spectacle.
PHILOSOPHY OF THE BULL-FIGHT.
It is poor and illogical philosophy to judge of foreign customs by our own habits, prejudices, and conventional opinions; a cold, unprepared, calculating stranger comes without the freemasonry of early associations, and criticises minutiae which are lost on the natives in their enthusiasm and feeling for the whole. He is horrified by details to which the Spaniards have become as accustomed as hospital nurses, whose finer sympathetic emotions of pity are deadened by repetition.