Thus piously does he introduce the name of the Creator, as the ruffians of a cock-pit introduce it profanely, in connexion with such deeds as the least reflection would show to be most abhorrent from the divine nature. His book is a compound of contradictions, of wisdom and folly, of compassion and cruelty. In one page he quotes, "Blessed are the merciful," and in the next he teaches to impale flies and grass-hoppers! He admires the beauty and cheerfulness of the landscape, and hastens to destroy the beings by which its beauty and cheerfulness are enhanced! He speaks with reverence and devotion of the Creator, and yet inflicts such tortures on his creatures as if he were a rebel against his sovereignty, and sought for vengeance on the Maker by the destruction of the things that are made! On the infamous crimes of houghing and mutilating cattle, to be avenged of their owner for some personal offence, or to gratify a spirit of political or religious animosity, it would be superfluous to expatiate. Such crimes, dastardly as they are barbarous, are confined to the lowest and most degraded of our species. Their perpetrators are not within the reach of the moralist. The legislature alone can deal with them, when detected, in a way that may be so effectual as to prevent their repetition. CAUSES OF CRUELTY. SECTION THIRD. LUXURY AND GLUTTONY. "O, could the Samian sage these horrors see, GIFFORD'S Juvenal. Luxury and gluttony are prolific sources of cruelty to animals. A thorough epicure who eats not to live, but lives only to eat, never hesitates to inflict any pain, or cause an animal to undergo any operation, however tedi ous and cruel, by which he thinks the flavour of its flesh may be improved. Hence a thousand and ten thousand enormities practised in the art of cookery, to gratify appetite, and a foolish, often criminal ostentation. The degenerate Romans, in many of their feasts displayed such pomp and extravagance as might seem incredible, accompanied with an ambitiously prodigal waste of animal life. Their gorgeous palaces and costly furniture-their massy gold and silver plate-their curtains of cloth of gold and embroidery-their perfumes, and their beverage of melted pearls, would have wanted their proper accompaniment, had there not been tables also furnished with the rarest and most costly viands. Accordingly all the kingdoms of nature were ransacked for whatever could contribute to satiate the demands of Roman luxury. Clodius Æsopus, the tragedian, had a huge platter, in which were served up all manner of singing birds, and such as could imitate the voice of man, at enormous expense, not merely to gratify the palate, but for the foolish boast that he had eaten the imitators of the human voice. But this dish of the tragedian was surpassed by that of Vitellius, dignified by the name of "Minerva's buckler," on account of its magnitude. "In this he blended together the livers of gilt-heads, the brains of pheasants, the tongues of phenicopters (flamingos), and the milts of lampreys brought from the Spanish and Carpathian seas by the masters of his ships and galleys." Heliogabalus had the heads. taken off 600 ostriches to make a dish of their brains. Nor were the Romans the only people remarkable for such extravagancies. The English, centuries ago, might contest the palm with them. The feast given by George Neville, brother to the great Earl of Warwick, at his instalment into the Archbishoprick of York, in 1470, was prodigal beyond example. The quantities of wild fowl slaughtered seem to have been enough to cause a scarcity for ages to come.- -See FULLER's Church History, lib. 4, cent. 15, p. 193. Of the number of animals slain for great festivals, or on other occasions, there may be no just reason to complain, provided they are necessary; but the manner in which many of them are prepared for the butcher, before they are brought to the table, is a subject of grave reprehension. No food is so palatable as that to which hunger gives a relish; but when the appetite has been pampered and glutted to satiety, it requires to be stimulated by artificial means. Then the simple meals which nature provides the fish fresh from its native stream, or the fowl from the stubble or barn-door, is found to be far too simple. The animal must be fed, tortured, put to death, and cooked, not as unsophisticated nature would dictate, but in some refined mode that will impart a flavor and richness which nature in her parsimony has denied. Some Vidius Pollio must have the lampreys in his fishponds fattened on human flesh; and a cook must be found who can "strike a lancet into the jugular of a carp, and stew it in its own blood." Let your salmon be crimped, your eels skinned, and your lobsters fried alive; make capons of your poultry, and cram them by force till they are ready to burst. For example:-"An unfortunate goose is bound in a hot, close situation, debarred all motion, its eyes put out to prevent the entrance of any excitement from without, then crammed with food; under these unnatural circumstances the liver becomes diseased,* it swells, a rich oily fat is deposited around and in its substance, and it forms that delicacy so highly esteemed by the gourmand, but which should be abhorred by every man of humane feelings, the far-famed foie gras de Strasbourg."-LORD's Popular Physiology, p. 198. Plutarch in his second treatise on the eating of flesh, to which he was decidedly adverse, expatiates on this subject with great strength and feeling. "If we are not ashamed," says he, "by reason of custom, to live unblamably, let us at least sin with discretion; let us eat flesh, but let it be for hunger, and not for wantonness. Let us kill an animal, but let us do it with sorrow and pity, and not abusing and tormenting it, as many now-a-days are used to do, while some run red-hot spits through the *The Roman epicures were not ignorant of this luxury.-See Juv. v. 114. MART. lib. xiii. 5, 8, and PLINY, lib. x. c. 22. The latter says, "Good cause it is that there be some question and controversie about the first inventor of this great, good, and singular commoditie to mankind." bodies of swine, that by the tincture of the quenched iron, the blood may be to that degree mortified, that it may sweeten and soften the flesh in its circulation." Plutarch mentions other instances of the cruelties of luxury still more disgusting and revolting, perpetrated "not for nourishment or want, but for mere gluttony, wantonness, and expensiveness, that they may make a pleasure of villainy." Again he says, "We are nothing put out of countenance either by the beauteous gayety of the colours, or by the charmingness of the musical voices, or by the rare sagacity of the intellects, or by the cleanness and neatness of diet, or by the rare discretion and prudence of these poor unfortunate animals; but for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life it has been born into the world to enjoy. And then we fancy that the voices it utters and screams forth to us are nothing else but certain inarticulate sounds and noises, and not the several deprecations, entreaties, and pleadings of each of them, as it were saying thus to us: 'I deprecate not thy necessity (if such there be) but thy wantonness. Kill me for thy feeding; but do not take me off for thy better feeding. O horrible cruelty!' "-See PLUTARCH'S Morals Translated, Lond. 1704, vol. v. Thunberg, in his second journey into Caffraria, notices a merciless mode of preparing the tortoise for the table. "The Testudo pusilla was the most common species here it was this which was now laid upon the fire for our eating. I slipped into the kitchen on purpose to see the mode of dressing it, and found that the girls were cruel enough to lay the poor animal wide open on the live coals, where, sprawling with its head and feet, it was broiled alive, till at length it burst to pieces with the heat." Nothing living that can be eaten escapes man's devouring jaws. That an animal can be eaten is deemed a sufficient reason for putting it to death. The improvement of its flesh in size or flavor is also deemed a sufficient reason for subjecting it to any process, however cruel, by which that object may be attained. The excuse for baiting bulls is that it renders them more edible. Dr. * James L. Drummond, in his letters to a young Naturalist, says, "It was once, and I fear still is the practice in some places, to whip pigs to death, because their flesh was thought to be improved by it. In these countries calves are drained of their blood, and made to feel, by repeated operations, all the miseries of exhaustion, merely to make the veal of a whiter colour."-(Let. xviii.) In another letter (viii.) he suspects there are grounds for supposing that the myriads of flies which infest some provinces of Spain, may be owing to the destruction of the swallows. "In Andalusia," says he," I have repeatedly seen Spaniards shooting every little bird they could find, for the market, and carrying them strung in form of festoons over their shoulders. I have also seen them take many small birds by limed twigs, which, when caught, they killed by a squeeze in the hand. Too often, indeed, the squeeze did not produce instant death, and it was pitiful to see the beautiful little creatures gasping and panting on the ground, the blood oozing from their bills. * Buffon mentions that in France the domestic swallow roosts at the close of summer, in great quantities, on alders by the banks of rivers, and great numbers are caught, which are eaten in some countries, as in Valencia in Spain, and Lignitz in Silesia. I find in the same author that the martin is caught in Alsace in nets; he states that Professor Hermann assures him, 'that the white-rumps or martins grow fat in autumn, and are then very good to eat. Of the sand-martin, another of the swallow tribe, the same author states that the young ones grow very fat, and may be compared for delicacy to the ortolans; and also that in some countries, as in Valencia in Spain, there is a great consumption of sand-martins. He says also of the swift, that this bird, like all the rest of its kind, (that is, all the swallow tribe,) is excellent for the table when fat; young ones, especially those taken out of the nest, are reckoned in Savoy and Piedmont delicate morsels.' A young bird taken out of the nest, a delicate morsel! I hope the heartless epicures may be eaten up by flies, till they become of a different opinion." the Insects, like birds, are the victims of man's epicurean rapacity. |