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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1660-1785] Enlightenment: » John Trusler

Rev. John Trusler

Hogarth Moralized: The Cock-Match

[1768] Rev. Dr. John Trusler, "The Cock-Match" in Hogarth Moralized (1768; London, 1831;Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks) 186-192.

As there are few scenes in life expressing the folly of mankind that Mr. Hogarth has not taken an opportunity of exposing; this among the rest is also worthy of our notice, being, like that of horse-racing, one of the fashionable diversions calculated to support the spirit of gaming, which this country is remarked for. Exclusive of this, I am persuaded it can afford very little entertainment, unless we delight in cruelty, and find pleasure in giving pain; for, and act of cruelty it must, certainly, be allowed, to e instrumental to the sufferings of nature, to behold with satisfaction two poor animals seeking the death of each other, and to rejoice ia the sight of blood.…Upon the whole, the moral tenor of this piece is to crate in us a disgust of such vulgar entertainment, and an abhorrence of such inhuman merriment, where the gentleman is disgraces and the man degraded. (186)