Plea for mercy to animals / by James Macauley.

  • Macaulay, James, 1817-1902.
Date:
[1875]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Plea for mercy to animals / by James Macauley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    In the same strain as those eloquent arguments of Lord Erskine are the words of the gentle and genial poet Cowper:— “ The Slim is this : if man’s convenience, health, Or safety interfere, his rights and claims Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs ; Else they are all, the meanest things that are. As free to live, and to enjoy that life. As God was free to form them at the first. Who in His sovereign wisdom made them all. Other motives of a religious hearing might be urged in behalf of our dumb clients. The fact of their being the creatures of God ought to secure our kind and humane treatment of them. “Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee : or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee : and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this ? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing” (Job xii. 7-10). God has made the sun, the skies, the air, free to all His creatures ; and man should not wantonly shorten the little day of pleasure, nor interrupt the lowly bliss of those creatures to whom the Creator has given the enjo5fment of life. Hear what Paley says in his “ Natural Theology,” in the chapter on “ The Goodness of the Deity ” :—“ It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water, teem with delighted existence. In a spring noon, or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes, myriads of happy beings crowd on my view. ‘ The insect youth are on the wing.’ Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, testify their joy, and the exultation which they feel in their newly-discovered faculties. A bee among the flowers in spring is one of the most cheerful objects