Cruelty to animals : the speech of Lord Erskine, in the House of Peers, on the second reading of the Bill preventing malicious and wanton cruelty to animals taken in short hand.

  • Erskine, Thomas Erskine, Baron, 1750-1823.
Date:
1809
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cruelty to animals : the speech of Lord Erskine, in the House of Peers, on the second reading of the Bill preventing malicious and wanton cruelty to animals taken in short hand. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    n Can there be a doubt, my Lords, that all such shock- ing practices should be considered and punished as mis- demeanors? Here again it may be said that the Bill, in this part of it, will invest Magistrates with a novel and dangerous discretion. I am not yet arrived at that part of the case, though I am last approaching it ; when I do, 1 pledge myself without fear to maintain the contrary, to the satisfaction of every one of your Lordships, more especially including the learned Lords .of the II ouse. No less frequent and wicked an abuse, is the manifest overloading of carriages and animals of burden, particularly asses, and as far as this poor ani- mal is unjustly considered an emblem of stupidity, the owners who thus oppress him aTC the greater asses of the two. The same may lie said of keeping animals without adequate food to support their strength, or even their existence—this frequently happens to beasts impounded for trespasses ; 1 have had complaints of this abuse from all parts of the country. The notice to the owner is seldom served, and thus the poor in- nocent animal is left to starve in the pound.—As faras an animal is considered merely as property, this may be all very well, and the owner must find him out at his peril, but when the animal is looked to, upon the prin- ciple of this Bill,.the impounder. ought to feed him, and charge it to the owner as part of he damages. Only one other offence remains, which I think it ne- cessary to advert to, which it is difficult sufficiently to expose and stigmatize, from the impudence with which it is every day committed, as if the perpetrators of this kind of wickedness were engaged in something extremely entertaining and innocent, if not merilo-