Page:OntheConductofMantoInferiorAnimals.pdf/54

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BUTCHERY
45

ding blood is committed into the hands of men who have been educated in inhumanity, and whose sensibility has been blunted and destroyed by early habits of barbarity. Thus men increase misery in order to avoid the sight of it ; and because they cannot endure being obviously cruel themselves, or commit actions which strike painfully on their senses, they commission those to commit them who are formed to delight in cruelty, and to whom misery, torture, and shedding of blood is an amusement. They appear not once to reflect, that whatever we do by another we do ourselves.

When a large and gentle bullock, after having resisted a ten times greater force of blows than would have killed his murderer, falls stunned, at last, and his armed head is fastened to the ground with cords; as soon as the wide wound is made, and the jugulars are cut asunder, what mortal can, without compassion, hear the painful bellowings intercepted by his blood, the bitter sighs, which speak the sharpness of his anguish, and the deep sounding groans, with loud anxiety, fetched from the bottom of his strong and palpitating heart. Look on the trembling and violent convulsions of his limbs; see while his reeking gore streams from him, his eya become dim and languid, and behold his strugglings, gasps, and last efforts for life. When a creature has given such convincing and undeniable proofs of terror, and of pain and agony, Is there a disciple of Descartes so inured to blood, as not to refute, by his commisseration, the philosophy of that vain reasoner?

The manner of slaughtering oxen in this country is barbarous. The writer of this passage has seen an ox receive five different blows, and break from it's murderers each time. The description of a head so