you a brute, a lower member, and use you as they will, because, devoid of their more highly pointed sensitiveness, you cannot feel like them? Let them, therefore, invade your happy state, where the body flourishes with the mind, and show their superiority by inflicting pain only upon you ;—

necessity,

The tyrant's plea-"

has not stronger force.

This indeed is the tyrant's plea, which has made stiff the neck of pride; than this very plea, how many tortures and oppressions, how many of the infamies of man against his fellow man have had no better foundation or excuse.

But, replies some poor embarrassed man, you wrong me. This is the picture of a fortunate individual, enjoying, by healthy labour, the comforts of life, and thoughtlessly abusing them. I am not so; I, like many more, am distressed and poor, can you expect my sympathies to creep beyond my bosom, and amid grievous pains of my own, to feel for the pains of animals? If,

beneath this pressure, I bestow kicks and blows more than are enough, does not my fretted temper plead for my excuse? Every Christian compassionates your sufferings, and is ready to make allowance for their sharpness and the weakness of human nature underneath them; but are your pains the less for giving pain to others? pain is like fire; you do not lose by what you impart. And do you think it likely your condition will be improved by contravening the sacred statutes of mercy, and inflicting pain because you are pained? Fear, then, as long as your heart remains rebellious and unsubdued, lest some yet greater calamity may be imposed to pierce its hardness; and believe it is not only in a Divine sense as regards the decrees of providence, that a heart full of mercy and resignation will meet with its reward; but that, in your temporal condition, unirritated feelings, and the conduct springing from them, must make you friends and better your estate; the reverse will make you shunned and hated, lead you from woe to woe, from deep to deeper still.

But let us view your argument in another light. Is your plea just and sincere; while you are harsh

F

and bitter towards brutes, do you preserve compassion and gentle sympathy towards your own superior kind? Do your children meet a father's care and tenderness, or do they share the blow and the unjust rebuke? and can you clearly recollect that when your sufferings have been less, your kindness towards animals has increased the more?

If so, we can only declare such conduct is quite inconsistent with our experience and observation; we never knew a person who used animals ill when they were poor, that used them well when they were rich; nor did we ever know any one who had towards them the genuine sympathy of a merciful heart whose kindness became extinguished by misfortune; on the contrary, the sympathies have been enlarged, and the feeling of their own sufferings has increased their compassion. When the heart is tuned aright, adversity plays on it the sweetest melodies; its fine edge is only dulled and blunted by misfortune, when it wants the heavenly temper of the "sword of Michael."

It appears, then, that your excuse does not avail you, and that your fault, though under dif

ferent circumstances, springs from the same source as the fault of the other. He in happiness and comfort is blinded by his ease to their sufferings, (and mark, the same feeling makes some hearts insensible to those of their own kind;) he is his own world; he thinks not of their pains, as if, because he is happy, they cannot feel; you are engrossed with your own sorrows, but the selfish principle is the same in each. He thinks he may inflict pain because they are less than he; you, because you are greater than they; where is the difference? an undue sense of the worth of your feelings, and of the worthlessness of theirs, occupies the minds of both. True it is, that mind must be very ignorant, and that heart very gross, which, when happy, does not desire to communicate its happiness around it, but, on the contrary, can impart pain even to a brute: but who shall hold the balance, and give you the preference in weighing your faults? who, having pain brought under your notice by your own sufferings, and your attention fixed on it, are still insensible to the pain of another.

We have thus endeavoured to combat the too prevailing prejudice, that there is an injustice

in punishing man for cruelty to brutes simply for the reason, that he is a man, and it is a brute. This to a cultivated mind must appear so obviously absurd, that time may seem wasted in opposing it; but when it is considered as forming, what it certainly does form, the ground-work of a great mass of cruelty, and a principal cause that prevents punishment for cruelty from having its due effect, it assumes an aspect of more importance. It is very plainly a question of the deficiency of religious knowledge and principle, and the same pride which makes a man assume a tyrannical superiority over animals will lead him to act a similar part towards his fellow-men; it is only a question of degree. Did he always bear in mind that compared with omnipotent power his greatness is but the struggle of the blade of grass above the pebble, he would hardly be betrayed into such overweening follies.

You, then, who have the care of horses, dogs, and cattle, in short, of any animal, reflect before you give a cruel and unnecessary blow-how would you like that blow inflicted on yourself? and we trust we have shown you that the answer usually