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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1785-1837] Romantic Age » Louis Simond

Louis Simond

Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain

On Humanity to Animals

[1815] Louis Simond, "On Humanity to Animals," in Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain, during the Years 1810 and 1811 by a French Traveller with Remarks on the Country, Its Arts, Literature and Customs of Its Inhabitants (New York, 1815; Google Books: Online Library of Free Full-Text eBooks).

The English boast of their humanity to animals, and may comparatively; but although animals are treated less cruelly here than in France, and are for that reason much more docile and manageable, yet there is still much to be shocked at.…It is a strange, but certainly happy dispensation of providence, that the impression of these sort of things should weaken so rapidly, as soon as the object is out of sight, otherwise, as new ones presented themselves, such an accumulation of misery would at last render the traveller worse than that of the horses. The supreme author of good and evil has wisely ordered, that a scratch, or a drop of blood shed under our eyes, should awaken a more lively sympathy, than all the horrors of a field of battle, where we are not; and that distance of time should also come in aid of local distance, to blunt unavailing pity. I cannot help think, however, that if this organization of human nature had been trusted to me, I should have wished to make distant evils, and "other's woes," somewhat more present to our imagination and feelings. (252-3)