The Horse and His Rider

by Sir Francis Bond Head

If thousands of omnibuses, cabs, and canal-boats, which have been plying seven days in the week, are suddenly restrained by human laws from running on the Sabbath, the proprietors instantly diminish the number of their horses, expressly for the purpose of continuing to give to each the same amount of work and of rest, the latter, like "the best of oats, beans, and chopped hay," being bestowed upon him solely to enable him to perform the maximum amount of work.

In short, by the common rule of three, as well as by the common rule of life, quaintly exemplified by the following extract, human reason calculates that if 7000 horses are necessary to work for seven days per week, only 6000 will be wanted to work for six days.

"Sunday and Week-day Religions.—The tides come twice a-day in New York Harbour, but they only come once in seven days in God's harbour of the sanctuary. They rise on Sunday, but ebb on Monday, and are down and out all the rest of the week. Men write over their store door, 'Business is business,' and over the church door, 'Religion is religion;' and they say to Religion, 'Never come in here,' and to Business, 'Never go in there.' 'Let us have no secular things in the pulpit,' they say; 'we get enough of them through the week in New York. There all is stringent and biting selfishness, and knives, and probes, and lancets, and hurry, and work, and worry. Here we want repose, and sedatives, and healing balm. All is prose over there; here let us have poetry. We want to sing hymns, and to hear about heaven and Calvary; in short, we want the pure Gospel without any worldly intermixture.' And so they desire to spend a pious, quiet Sabbath, full of pleasant imaginings and peaceful recollections; but when the day is gone, all is laid aside. They will take by the throat the first debtor whom they meet, and exclaim, 'Pay me what thou owest. It is Monday.' And when the minister ventures to hint to them something about their duty to their fellow-men, they say, 'Oh, you stick to your preaching. You do not know how to collect your own debts, and cannot tell what a man may have to do in his intercourse with the world.' God's law is not allowed to go into the week. If the merchant spies it in his store, he throws it over the counter. If the clerk sees it in the bank, he kicks it out at the door. If it is found in the street, the multitude pursue it, pelting it with stones, as if it were a wolf escaped from a menagerie, and shouting, 'Back with you! You have got out of Sunday.' There is no religion in all this. It is mere sentimentalism. Religion belongs to every day—to the place of business as much as to the church. High in an ancient belfry there is a clock, and once a week the old sexton winds it up; but it has neither dial plate nor hands. The pendulum swings, and there it goes, ticking, ticking, day in and day out, unnoticed and useless. What the old clock is in its dark chamber, keeping time to itself, but never showing it, that is the mere sentimentality of religion, high above life, in the region of airy thought; perched up in the top of Sunday, but without dial or pointer to let the week know what o'clock it is, of time or of eternity."—American Paper.

It may be impracticable to prevent man from taking to himself the whole benefit of every ingenious invention by which the physical power of the horse can be increased, yet surely, either by legislation or by the power of public opinion, he should be required to grant or rather transmit to the poor animal, as a gift from Heaven, the benefit of any scientific discovery that may save him from unnecessary and indescribable agony under operations almost all of which are prescribed either for the self interest, pride, or fashions of his master.

But although the avowed object of the criminal laws of England is to prevent crime by the infliction of a scale of punishments which, fearful enough to deter the guiltiest, are all divested, so far as science can devise, of bodily pain; although we deprecate any suffering on the tread-mill beyond that of ordinary hard labour; and although even for the murderer we have invented a machinery of rope, planks, and bolts to produce a sudden and almost painless death, yet, until lately, people of both sexes, of all ages, and of every sort and condition, have under the surgeon's knife been subjected to tortures which it would have been beyond the ingenuity of the most merciless tyrant that ever existed to have invented.

The screams, however, which have resounded throughout the civilized world—in private houses, in palaces, in cottages, on the field of battle, between the decks of men-of-war, and through the doors and windows of all public hospitals,—have lately, by the command and blessing of Almighty God, been suddenly stopped by the administration of chloroform, which now, diluted in the proportion of three parts of vapour to ninety-seven parts of atmospheric air, causes a patient, at no risk whatever of his life, and at a cost amounting to less than two-pence, to be bereft, not necessarily of his senses, but merely of sensation, while the knife, without the infliction of the slightest pain, is performing on his living body the most appalling operations.

"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof."

Now, if in return for this extraordinary alleviation, or rather annihilation of all sufferings under surgical treatment, man should deem it his duty to render public thanks to that Omnipotent Power from which it has proceeded, is it possible for him practically to perform any more acceptable act of acknowledgment than to allow the dumb creatures in his service to participate in a blessing which, by Divine authority, has been imparted to the possessors, not exclusively of human reason, but without favour or exception, of animal life?

As regards his horses, the performance of this duty is especially incumbent: for not only, like all other animals, are they liable to the accidents and ills that flesh is heir to, but some of the cruelest operations to which they are subjected—such, for instance, as cutting off and cauterising their tails, burning their sinews with red hot irons, dividing and cutting out a portion of a nerve, with other excruciating operations on young horses, under which they are often heard to squeal from pain—are inflicted on them, to comply with either a useless as well as a barbarous fashion;—or to enable them "to go for another season's hunting;"—or to make them "sound enough to sell;" or for the attainment of conveniences of which the horse derives not the smallest share: and as the high-bred, broken-down hunter has no voice to ask for mercy,—as he cannot boast of possessing reason,—as he has inherited no knowledge,—as he has no power to bequeath any,—as his whole energies have been devoted to the service and enjoyments of man, by whose mechanical contrivances he is now "cast" with his four feet shackled together, lying prostrate on a heap of straw;—just before the red-hot iron sears his over-strained sinews, or the sharp knife is inserted into his living flesh—surely, in a civilized country like England, some high power should be authorized to exclaim, not "Woodman, spare that tree!" but "Sportsman, SAVE that horse!" by chloroform, from the agonising torture to which you have sentenced him!

You are a man of pleasure:—save him from unnecessary pain. You are a man of business:—inscribe in that ledger in which every one of the acts of your life is recorded, on one side how much he will gain, and on the other, per contrà, how very little you will lose, by the evaporation of a fluid that will not cost you the price of the shoes of the poor animal whose marketable value you have determined, by excruciating agony to him, to increase.