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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1785-1837] Romantic Age » Country Village Rector

Country Village Rector

Familiar Essays: On Humanity to Animals

[1787] Rector of an Obscure County Village, "On Humanity to Animals," in Familiar Essays, on Interesting Subjects (London, 1787; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks).

It is of the first consequence, in training up the youth of both sexes, that they be early inspired with humanity, and particularly that its principles be implanted strongly in their yet tender hearts, to guard them against inflicting wanton pain on those animals, which use or accident may occasionally put into their power. (154)

Do they not confine the feathered warblers in a cage, barring them from freedom, their inherent right, and from those employments to which instinctive nature so strongly impels them? Will the lark carol with that energy, on one poor sod in his wire prison, as when he soars into the sky till his flight is imperceptible? (159)

She takes her station by the side of the murmuring stream, and, with the utmost unconcern forces the barbed hook through the defenceless body of the writhing worm, and there it must remain, in torture, as a bait for the fish; for, should death put a period to its existence, it is no longer fit for use, and must be succeeded by another sufferer. Can there be a more dreadful, a more ingenious piece of torture contrived than this? yet will they tell you, with a laugh, it is only a worm. Is pain then confined to beings of a larger bulk? Has not the worm a body, in all its parts exquisitely formed by the hand of Providence? (161)

Let not these reflections be called to strong, or too severe—the cause of humanity (the cause of every thinking and considerate man) demands it. So various, so complicated are the evils under which the domestic animals suffer by the hand of man, that no expression can be too forcible to rescue them from the cruelties under which they so often languish. (168)

review of "Familiar Essays on Interesting Subjects, [by a Rector of an Obscure Country Village, 1787]," Gentleman's Magazine 57 (1787-Dec}: 1101.