Page:OntheConductofMantoInferiorAnimals.pdf/40

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BUYING UP OF HORSES.
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seizing the near, or left hand horse, beat him for a considerable time with the butt.end of his whip; he then proceeded to the right hand, or off horse, the outer shoulder of which was perfectly raw and excoriated, exposing a sort of pipe hole in it's centre, which hole appeared to have been formed by a rowel. The coachman then proceeded to punch repeatedly the raw surface of the shoulder, and deliberately worked the butt-end of the whip into the said rowel or pipe-hole. His lordship intreated him to desist, reminding him of the utter incapacity, on the part of the horses, to move. The coachman's reply was, "If he, his lordship, interfered any further on the part of the horses, he would kill them with a knife which he had in big pocket!"

Lord Erskine said, in his speech to the House of Peers, "I can assert, with the greatest sincerity, that nothing has ever excited in my mind greater disgust, than to observe, what we all of us are obliged to see every day, horses panting⸻What do I say? literally dying under the scourge, when on looking into the chaises, we see them carrying to and from London, men and women, to whom or to others it can be of no possible signification whether they arrive one day sooner or later, and sometimes indeed whether they ever arrive.

The Buying up of Horses, is an evil which exists under the deliberate calculation of intolerable avarice. This practice takes place at a time when past their strength, from old age or disease, upon the computation of how many days of torture and oppression they are capable of living under, so as to return a profit, with the addition of flesh and skin, when brought to one of the numerous houses appropriated for the slaughter of horses. If this practice,