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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1785-1837] Romantic Age » James Lawson Drummond

James Lawson Drummond

Letters to a Young Naturalist

Cruelty to Animals

[1831] James Lawson Drummond, "On Cruelty to Animals," in Letters to A Young Naturalist on the Study of Nature and Natural Theology (London, 1831; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks).

Are men never to learn any feelings of humanity? Never, I believe in a country like Spain, where females delight in bull-fights, and human beings are burned by the church for not professing to understand what cannot be understood; nor in England, where horses are systematically put to death by hard work and flogging, and where the enaction of laws to punish acts of cruelty is so generally thought to be "beneath the dignity of the legislature." As for Ireland, humanity is there a still emptier sound, and not a voice is raised against that hardened indifference, with which people of all ranks, with very few exceptions look upon the sufferings of animals groaning under our tyranny and injustice. (120-1)