George Nicholson

“ What should we think of a strong man, who should exert his pride, his petulance, his tyranny, and barbarity on a helpless innocent and inoffensive child? Should we not abhor and detest him as a mean, cowardly, and savage wretch, unworthy the stature and strength of a man? No less mean, cowardly, and savage is it, to abuse and torment an innocent beast, who cannot avenge or help himself ”

“ But whatever becomes of utility, the horse is certainly more beautiful, we are told, without his dangling tail. What a handsome figure he makes, when "he carries both his ends well!" This is the constant language of horse-dealers, stable-keepers, and grooms; and such language, tho' originating in tasteless ignorance, and mere prejudice, has perverted the sense, and understanding of men. It is inconceivable, how delusively the eye sees, as well as the understanding, when it is fascinated, and led aside by fashion and custom. Associated ideas of various kinds give truth a different air. ”

“ There are many ways surely of using manly exercise, at least as healthful and far more innocent, and less expensive and dangerous, than galloping over hedges, gates and ditches. If the manliness of the action lie in the risk you run of breaking your neck for no end, it would still be greater manliness to jump down a precipice. The destruction of an animal is esteemed amusement! strange perversion of feeling! There are persons who take delight in knocking down an ox: if hunting be a more genteel amusement it is certainly a more cruel one.
Detested sport! ”

“ If men will shoot and kill each other, or if they will hack and hew one another to pieces, they cannot be christians, nor can their employers be christians. Christianity inculcates the very reverse. What custom of the most barbarous nations is more repugnant to the feelings of piety, humanity, and justice, than that of deciding controversies between nations by the edge of the sword, by powder and ball, or the point of the bayonet? What other savage custom has occasioned half the desolation and misery to the human race? ”

“ The generous and enlightened Hindoo, diffues over every order of life his affections; beholds, in every creature, a kinsman; rejoices in the welfare of every animal, and compassionates his pains; for he is convinced, that the essence of all creatures is the same, and that one eternal First Cause is the Father of all. Hence the merciful Hindostan is solicitous to save every species of animal, while the cruel vanity and exquisite voraciousness of other nations are ingenious to discover in the bulk, or taste, or smell, or beauty of every creature, a cause of death, an incentive to murder. ”

“ There is another species of inhumanity, which all ranks, except the poor and indigent, stand chargeable with; which is the custom of travelling post. How often the trembling chaise or coach-horse, panting for breath, every limb shattered by the hardness of the roads, arrives in the inn-yard, spent to the last under extreme exertion. His sides wreathed or bleeding with the lashes or spurs of his unfeeling driver, and every muscle and tendon quivering with convulsive agony! ”

“ Transport yourselves but in imagination, for one moment, into the field of battle; and into the wretched countries which are the theatre of war; and surely, if your hearts be not seared to all the impressions of mercy, loving-kindness, and compassion, they will weep tears of blood for the woes which ye will there see accumulated upon suffering humanity. Behold whole ranks of human beings stretched out upon the earth, maimed and mutilated, dying and dead. ”

“ In order to avoid all the generous and spontaneous sympathies of compassion, the office of shedding blood is committed into the hands of men who have been educated in inhumanity, and whose sensibility has been blunted and destroyed by early habits of barbarity. Thus men increase misery in order to avoid the sight of it ; and because they cannot endure being obviously cruel themselves, or commit actions which strike painfully on their senses, they commission those to commit them who are formed to delight in cruelty, and to whom misery, torture, and shedding of blood is an amusement. ”

“ Such is the depravity of the human race, that because this poor animal is meek and patient, beyond all comparison, it is subjected to excessive labour, the most barbarous treatment, and the coarsest food. It's humble appearance, size, and want of spirit, subjects it to become the property of the most abject and brutal of the human kind. The common lanes and high roads are it's nightly residence; where it becomes the sport of debased children, who have been early initiated in unfeelingness and the arts of wanton cruelty. ”

“ Why then do not preachers, who pretend to promulgate the doctrine of Christ, inveigh vigourously, in the name of God, against the ambition of potentates; against the sacrilegious laws of war; against the decoration of our churches, dedicated to mercy and charity, with banners won, by shedding the blood of nations? With what face of consistency can they give their benedictions to the standards around which our sanguinary soldiers assemble? Let them refuse their ministrations to every one who contributes toward the increase of human wretchedness. ”

“ Let it not be forgotten, however, that the influence of war is equally fatal to the morality, as to the happiness, of a country. The habits which a state of warfare necessarily introduces, into a nation, are every way unfavouable to virtue, and encouraging to vice. The authority of the laws, and the sanctions of equity, which peaceful times and a quiet order of things preserve in their strength and purity, are weakened, loosened, and too often overturned, when the military spirit has once seized upon the national character. ”

“ The natural consequence of their prevalence is an unfeeling and unprincipled ambition, with an idolatry of talents, and a contempt of virtue; whence the esteem of mankind is turned from the humble, the beneficent, and the good, to men who are qualified, by a genius, fertile in expedients, a courage that is never appalled, and a heart that never pities, to become the destroyers of the earth. ”

“ We may be assured, that nature's forms are always the most beautiful; and therefore we should endeavour to correct our ideas by her's. If, however, we cannot give up the point, let us at least be consistent. If we admire a horse without a tail, or a cock without feathers, let us not laugh at the Chinese for admiring the disproportioned foot of his mistress; or at the Indian, for doting on her black teeth, and tattooed cheeks. For myself, I cannot conceive, why it should make a horse more beautiful to take his tail from him, than it would be to clap a tail, as an addition of beauty, to a man. ”

“ Created solely for my use, submit without a murmur to the decrees of Heaven, and to the mandates of me; of me, the Heaven deputed despot of every creature that walks, or creeps, or swims, or flies; in air, on earth, or in the waters.' Thus the fate of the animal world has followed the progress of man from his sylvan state to that of civilization, till the gradual improvements of art, on this glorious pinnacle of independence, have at length placed him free from every lovely prejudice of nature, and an enemy to life and happiness through all it's various forms.—Oswald. ”

“ I am sorry this temper is become almost a distinguishing character of our own nation, from the observation which is made by foreigners, on our beloved pastimes, bear-baiting, cock lighting, and the like. We should find it hard to vindicate the distroying of any thing that has life, merely out of wantonness; yet, in this principle, our children are bred up, and one of the first pleasures we allow them, is the licence of inflicting paip upon poor animals; almost as soon as we are sensible what life is ourselves, we make it our sport to take it from other creatures. ”

“ When a large and gentle bullock, after having resisted a ten times greater force of blows than would have killed his murderer, falls stunned, at last, and his armed head is fastened to the ground with cords; as soon as the wide wound is made, and the jugulars are cut asunder, what mortal can, without compassion, hear the painful bellowings intercepted by his blood, the bitter sighs, which speak the sharpness of his anguish, and the deep sounding groans, with loud anxiety, fetched from the bottom of his strong and palpitating heart. ”

“ Where is human reason and humanity when inclination is unrestrained? It is evident there is no bounds to the tyranny of man. He lords it equally over his own kind and over those he denominates brutes. Nay, there are of the race of man, who exhibit human flesh as a marketable commodity. ”

“ During a dreadful famine in India, which destroyed more than a hundred thousand persons, when the roads and streets were covered with dead bodies, because people had not sufficient strength to inter them, I saw several have the resolution to preserve their lives by this disgusting food; but some of them, tho' not many, found it so delicious that, when the famine was at an end, they retained such an irresistible propensity to eat human flesh that they lay in wait for the living in order to devour them. ”

“ When we see a game-cock, with all his sprightly actions and gorgeous plumes about him, we acknowledge one of the most beautiful birds in nature. But when we see him armed with steel and prepared for battle, we cry, what a scarecrow! A cock-fighter, however, with all the ideas of the pit about him, will conceive, that in this latter state, he is in his greatest beauty ”

“ Of all rapacious animals, man is the most universal destroyer. The destruction of carnivorous quadrupeds, birds and insects, is, generally, limited to particular kinds; but the rapacity of man has scarcely any limitation. His empire over other animals, which inhabit this globe, is almost universal. He subdues or devours every species. Of the horse, and dog, he makes domestic slaves, and tho' he does not eat them, he either compels them to labour or keeps them for amusement. ”

“ How will man, that sanguinary tyrant, be able to excuse himself from the charge of innumerable cruelties inflicted on unoffending subjects committed to his care, formed for his benefit, and placed under his authority by their common Father, whose mercy is over all his works, and who expects that his authority should be exercised not only with tenderness and mercy, but in conformity to the laws of justice and gratitude? ”

“ Manliness implies some mode of action, that becomes a man. Hunting might, formerly, have been a manly exercise, when the country was overrun with boars and wolves, and it was a public service to extirpate them; but to honour with the name of manliness the cruel practice of pursuing timid animals, and putting them to death, for amusement, is to pervert the meaning of words. In countries where the inhabitants are harrassed by ferocious animals, there may be some plea for converting the destruction of them into a sport, and a test of courage to accelerate their extirpation ”

“ Let those who can feel no sympathy with the heart-rending groans of the victim, join only with the blood hounds, from whose ravenous fangs the huntsman snatches the prey, in howlings of disappointed brutality. O poverty! if thou art in the enjoyment of the passions of hunger, thirst, and lore, thou art to be adored not dreaded ”

“ The fact, however, is, that mankind have been so long accustomed to this barbarous mode of decision, that they think not of any other. Yet, notwithstanding the force of custom, the appearance of necessity, the sanction of time, the power of example, the danger of delay, the strength of our enemies, and the urgency of the case, no war can be justified by that party which has not exhausted every means of conciliation, and proposed every scheme of settling differences, without resorting to the sword. To what purpose is it to educate a young man in the principles of generosity and humanity ”

“ I speak not of low grooms, and jockies; we have seen the studs of men of the first fashion, misled probably by their grooms and jockies, producing only cropt-horses.
When a fine horse has wide, lopping ears, as he sometimes has, without spring or motion in them, a man may be tempted to remove the deformity; but to cut a pair of fine ears from the head of a horse, is, if possible, a greater absurdity, than to cut off his tail. Nothing can be alleged in it's defence. The ear neither retards motion, nor flings dirt. ”