Various - Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 714

In our youthful days in the early years of the present century, little consideration was given to a systematic kindness to animals. Horses were overwrought without mercy, when ill-fed and with wounds which should have excited compassion. If they sunk down in their misery, they were left to die, the chances being that, in their last hours, they were inhumanly pelted with stones by boys; – no one, not even magistrates or clergymen, giving any concern to the cruelties that were perpetrated. All that we have seen, without exciting a word of remonstrance. A wretch who habitually turned out his old, overwrought, and half-starved horses to die on the town-green, never incurred any check or reprobation. His proceedings were viewed with perfect indifference. People, while passing along in a demure sort of way to church, would see a crowd of boys pitching stones into the wounds of a dying horse, and not one of these decorous church-goers endeavoured to stop these horrid acts of inhumanity. Like the Pharisees of old, they passed on the other side. Such within recollection is a small sample of the unchecked atrocities of our young days. Cats were pelted to death. Birds' nests were robbed. Dogs had kettles tied to their tail, and were hounded to madness by howling multitudes. Oxen were overdriven to an infuriated condition, and their frantic and revengeful career formed an acceptable subject of public amusement.

Barbarous in a certain sense as these comparatively recent times were, there had already been shewn instances of a kind consideration for animals. The poet Cowper, it will be recollected, wrote touchingly of the hares which he had domesticated. Sir Walter Scott's tender regard for his dogs has been recently noticed in these pages. There was here and there a glimmering consciousness that animals had some sort of claims on the mercy of mankind. What strikes one as curious is that society had retrograded in this respect. The oldest laws in the world, found in the early books of the Old Testament, enjoin a kind treatment of animals. If we see an ass fall which belongs to some one with whom we have a cause of difference, we are to throw aside private feelings, and hasten to help the animal. We are not to take a bird when sitting on its eggs, or on its young; a most humane injunction. In various texts the Hebrews were enjoined to have due regard for the comfort of the ox, the ass, or any other animal which laboured for them. In these venerable records, mercy is enjoined towards all living creatures.

The modern world, with all its pompous claims to civilisation, strangely drifted into an entire neglect of these beneficent obligations. Throughout Christendom, any laws enforcing a kind treatment of animals are few in number, and of very recent date. Even within our remembrance, clergymen were not usually in the habit of inculcating that species of kindness to domesticated creatures which we read of in the Old Testament; nor were children ordinarily taught lessons of humanity within the family circle. The oldest statutory laws concerning animals are those for the protection of game; but these laws proceeded on no principle of kindness. They were intended only to protect certain birds and quadrupeds during the breeding season, with a view to what is called 'sport,' the pleasure of killing them by licensed individuals – the license for indulging in this species of luxury being, as is well known, pretty costly. It is not our wish to hold up 'sport' of a legitimate kind to ridicule. The chief matter of regret is the coarse way in which game is sometimes pursued and killed even by licensed sportsmen: their operations in what is known as a battue , when vast numbers of animals are driven into narrow spaces, and shot down and maimed without mercy, being, as we think, no better than wholesale butchery; and not what might be expected from persons of taste and education.

Although in the early years of the present century there were no laws for the specific purpose of preventing cruelty to animals, thoughtful and humane persons were beginning to give attention to the subject. In 1809, Sir Charles Bunbury brought into the House of Commons a bill for the 'Prevention of wanton and malicious cruelty to Animals.' Mr Windham, a cabinet minister, little to his credit, opposed the bill, and it failed to pass. The next attempt at legislation on the subject was made by Lord Erskine in the House of Lords in 1810. His measure was opposed by Lord Ellenborough, and had to be withdrawn. There the matter rested until 1821, when Mr Richard Martin, member of parliament for Galway, brought a bill into the House of Commons for the 'Prevention of Cruelty to Horses.' It encountered torrents of ridicule, and after passing a second reading in a thin house, was no further proceeded with. Mr Martin, however, was not discouraged. He felt he was right, and returned to the encounter. In 1822, he introduced a new and more comprehensive bill. Instead of horses, he used the word 'cattle;' this bill passed through all its stages, and became an act of parliament. This act of 1822 was the first ever enacted against cruel and improper treatment of animals. Let there be every honour to the memory of Richard Martin for his noble struggle on behalf of defenceless creatures. In 1825, he brought in a bill for the suppression of bear-baiting and other cruel sports. Not without surprise do we learn that Sir Robert Peel met the bill with determined opposition, and that it was thrown out. To think that so eminent a statesman as Peel should have been a supporter of bear-baiting! No fact could better present an idea of what was still the backward state of feeling among educated persons on the subject of cruelty to animals.

The year 1826 found Mr Martin still at his post. He framed a bill to extend protection to dogs, cats, and other domesticated animals from cruelty. In this it might have been expected he would have been successful. But no. His arguments to move the House of Commons were unavailing. Mr Martin died in 1834. Not until 1835, when more enlarged ideas prevailed, was there an Act to throw a protecting shield over cattle in the market, on the way to the slaughter-house, and in the roads and streets generally; over all such animals as dogs, bulls, bears, or cocks, kept for purposes of baiting or fighting; over all animals kept in pounds or inclosures without a sufficiency of food or drink; and over all worn-out horses, compelled to work when broken down with weakness or disease.

It was reserved for the beneficent reign of the present Queen to see a comprehensive Act of Parliament for the prevention of cruelty to animals. This was the Act of 1849 (which was extended to Scotland in 1850), that now forms the basis for prosecuting cases of cruelty, and may be called the charter which conferred on domesticated animals a right to protection. Lamenting the backwardness of England in establishing such a charter, it is not without pride that one knows that England was after all the first country in modern times to enforce the principle that the lower animals are entitled to be protected by law. That principle, as we have shewn, is not new. It was recognised by the ancient Hebrews, and it is pleasing to feel that at length modern common-sense has legislatively assumed its propriety. Latterly, there have been several additional Acts of Parliament, chiefly as concerns protection to sea-birds and small land-birds; but while well meant, these Acts are very imperfect. The eggs of sea-birds not being protected, the nests of these animals may be rifled with impunity. As regards small birds, a number are left out in the list of protected animals – the skylark for one. These deficiencies are unfortunate. Sea-birds, though generally looked on with indifference, are of great public utility. They benefit agriculturists by eating the worms and grubs in newly ploughed land; they hover over parts of the sea and point out where there are shoals of herrings and other fish; they are useful to the mariner in foggy weather, by their warning cries near the rock-bound coast. How beautiful that arrangement of Nature, in making provision for birds to live on shelving rocks by the sea-shore, there to act like beacons, in warning off the bark of the mariner from a coast that would cause its destruction! Considering that wonderful provision, how scandalous, how short-sighted the practice of rifling the nests of sea-birds! A supplementary Act to protect the eggs of sea-birds cannot, as a matter of public duty, be too soon passed. Already, on some parts of the coast, sea-birds are said to be rapidly disappearing.