Humanity Against Cruelty to Animals in Historical Literature, Timeline of Animal Rights History

Animal Rights History »»William Martin Trinder

1786 | Practical Sermons

On Cruelty

But is man only cruel to his own species? Surely not: and, therefore, when we talk of mercy, we do err by confining it to our fellow-creatrues. It is then but partial. Thus a man will disclaim the imputation of cruelty, if he offend not the people about him, although he live in the daily exercise of barbarity against domestic and dependant animals. Will not the horse-dealer, and the gentleman that acts like one (O shameful ambition! 0 furnish us with a long catalogue of cruelties, that are daily committed for the sake of alluring the whimsical fancy of hard-hearted, but fashionable men? To mutilate and to deform a serviceable and hamless animal, under the silly idea of improving what the Deity hath already made perfect in its kind, is, to say no worse, the most egregious folly; but where can any spark of generosity or mercy be found in that man, who, for the sake of the slightest pleasure of the will, or for the sake of amusing himslef with the agony of their forced excertion, urges on his horse to the utmost of their speed and strength, sometimes to the very point of death, by the most intolerable torture? (William Martin Trinder, Practical Sermons [1786], "On Cruelty")

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1786 | William Martin Trinder, Sermon VIII. "On Cruelty," in Practical Sermons, Preached at Hendon, in Middlesex [1st ed. London, 1786] (London, 1793; Digitized by Google, 2007).

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