In England the cruel
treatment of animals is a crime punishable by law and there is a “Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” which does good work in bringing brutes
who maltreat dumb creatures to justice. The Bible says, “A righteous man regarded
the life of his beast”, thus making kindness and justice to domestic animals an
essential part of human virtue. Those animals, such as the horse, dog, donkey
and mule, which men have bred and trained for their own use have a special
claim on our mercy and justice; the more so as they are dumb and helpless in
our hands, and cannot plead their own cause. The man who starves his horse,
beats his dog, or unmercifully overloads his ass, is a brute and a bully. He is
also a fool; for even a selfish slave-owner knows that it is to his own
advantage to have slaves well-fed and well cared for. And yet when we think of
what many of these dumb creatures suffer at the hands of men, it is enough to
make angels weep. As the poet Blake said:
“A captive Redbreast in a cage sets
all Heaven in a rage.”
A great deal of cruelty
to animals is due simply to thoughtlessness and lack of imagination. People do
not always mean to be cruel; they just do not think. How many happy wild birds
are caught and kept in small cages to please us with their songs! People think
nothing of it, and imagine that if they keep the bird well-fed and its cage
clean, it will be quite happy. But how can a wild think which has been used to
flying in the sky in boundless liberty, ever be happy cooped up in a narrow
space? Its songs should fill us with remorse rather than give us any pleasure.
We cannot excuse our cruelty on the ground of thoughtlessness. It is our duty
to think; and no one who cannot enter into the feelings of an animal and
sympathize with it in its weakness and helplessness, should be allowed to one.
One cannot here discuss
the question of killing animals for food. But if men must have meat to eat, it
is their duty to see that such animals are killed painlessly. It makes one
shudder to think what tortures sheep and oxen have to undergo at the hands of
brutal men in unregulated slaughter-houses.