We can scarcely view a boat travelling this liquid road, without raising opposite sensations--pleased to think of its great benefit to the community, and grieved to behold wanton punishment.
I see a large field of cruelty expanding before me, which I could easily prevail with myself to enter; in which we behold the child plucking a wing and a leg off a fly, to try how the poor insect can perform with half his limbs; or running a pin through the posteriors of a locust, to observe it spinning through the air, like a comet, drawing a tail of thread. If we allow, man has a right to destroy noxious animals, we cannot allow he has a right to protract their pain by a lingering death. By fine gradations the modes of cruelty improve with years, in pinching the tail of a cat for the music of her voice, kicking a dog because we have trod upon his foot, or hanging him for fun, 'till we arrive at the priests in the church of Rome, who burnt people for opinion; or to the painter, who begged the life of a criminal, that he might torture him to death with the severest pangs, to catch the agonizing feature, and transfer it into his favourite piece, of a dying Saviour. But did that Saviour teach such doctrine? Humanity would wish rather to have lost the piece, than have heard of the cruelty. What, if the injured ghost of the criminal is at this moment torturing that of the painter?--
But as this capacious field is beyond the line I profess, and, as I have no direct accusation against the people of my regard, I shall not enter.
DERITEND BRIDGE.
Cooper's-mill, situated upon the verge of the parishes of Afton and Birmingham, 400 yards below this bridge, was probably first erected in the the peaceable ages of Saxon influence, and continued a part of the manorial estate 'till the disposal of it in 1730.
Before the water was pounded up to supply the mill, it must have been so shallow, as to admit a passage between Digbeth and Deritend, over a few stepping stones; and a gate seems to have been placed upon the verge of the river, to prevent encroachments of the cattle.
This accounts for the original name, which Dugdale tells us was Derry-yate-end: derry, low; yate, gate; end, extremity of the parish; with which it perfectly agrees.
The mill afterwards causing the water to be dammed up, gave rise to a succession of paltry bridges, chiefly of timber, to preserve a communication between the two streets.
But in later ages, the passage was dignified with those of stone. In 1750, a wretched one was taken down, and the present bridge erected by Henry Bradford and John Collins, overseers of the highway, consisting of five arches; but the homely style, the deep ascent, and the circumscribed width prevents encomium.