a measure would be only an act of justice to solvent peers, who are above the temptation of any ministerial bribe. It would purify the "order" from those stigmas which now attach to it, and we should no longer hear of our hereditary legislators colluding with jockeys to swindle on the turf, associated with common blacklegs in the management of a "hell," or making matrimonial excursions to the eastward of Temple Bar, to swap a coronet against the money bags of some successful stock jobber. If we are to have exclusiveness, let it be that of honour among the men and chastity among the women: it will then endure, because it will be respected.

Our ancestors, however, reduced this question into arithmetical precision, as we learn from the remarks of Lord Coke in his report of Nevill's case cited above. "And it is to be known that as in ancient times the senators of Rome were elected a censu of their revenues, so here in ancient times in conferring of nobility, respect was had to their revenues, by which their dignity and nobility might be supported and maintained. And therefore a knight ought to have £20 land per annum. A baron thirteen knights' fees and a quarter: an earl twenty knights' fees, (for there was not any duke in England from the time of the conquest until 11 Edw. III, and the Duke of Cornwall was the first duke after the conquest in England.) And that appears by the statute Magna Charta, c. 2. For always the fourth part of such revenue, which is requisite by the law to the dignity, shall be paid to the king as a relief: for the relief of a knight's fee is £5, which is the fourth part of £20, which is a knight's revenue: and the relief of a baron is 100 marks, which is the fourth part of his revenue, viz. 400 marks, and includes thirteen knight's fees and a quarter and the relief of an earl is £100, which is the fourth part of £400, which is the revenue of an earl. And it appears by the records of the exchequer, that the relief of a duke shall amount to £200, and by consequence his revenue ought to be £800 per annum, and that is the reason in our books that every one of the nobility is presumed in law to have sufficient freehold ad sustinendum nomen et onus, for supporting his rank and the burthen of it."

:

It was by reason of this legal presumption that the persons of peers of the realm were privileged from arrest for debt. Of this we have proof in the case of Isabel, Countess of Rutland, who, being a widow, was arrested by certain serjeants at mace, in consequence of which the attorney general lodged an information against them for false imprisonment. The arrest, be it observed, was not an initiatory proceeding before trial, but a capias ad satisfaciendum, on a judgment in debt given against her in the common pleas. The arrest was set aside, and the serjeants at mace punished, the judges having decided :

"That the person of one who is in law a countess by marriage or by descent, is not to be arrested for debt or trespass for although, in respect

of her sex, she cannot sit in parliament, yet she is a peer of the realm, and shall be tried by her peers, as appears by the statute 20th Henry the Sixth, which was but a declaration of the common law. And there are two reasons why her person should not be arrested in such cases; one in respect of her dignity, and the other in respect that the law doth presume that she hath sufficient lands and tenements in which she may be distrained. And both these points are well confirmed by our books, 11th of Henry the Fourth, 15 b., in a homine replegiando, against the Lady Spencer; it appears that the Lady Spencer was a peer of the realm, and that in debt or trespass, capias lieth not against an earl, baron, or baroness, et hujusmodi, for because of their estate and dignity they are intended (presumed) to have sufficient. 3d of Henry the Sixth, 48, a. An action of debt was brought against a man and his wife, Countess of D., against whom an exigent was prayed. Newton: you cannot have an exigent against an earl, and no more against a countess; and Fulthorpe there said, that the reason thereof was not only, because it cannot be intended that an earl can be without lands, but another reason is, for the dignity of his name.' Members of the House of Commons are privileged from arrest for debt on the fiction of their attending to their senatorial duties, and the same plea is usually set up for the hereditary peers. But it is clear, from the case of the Countess of Rutland, that this is an erroneous view of the subject, it being most specially and distinctly declared that the privilege hinges on the supposition of their possessing sufficient freehold to support their dignity, and not at all on account of their legislative functions, for their very rank as peers was forfeited through poverty, as we have shown in the case of Nevill, Duke of Bedford, and of course the deprivation of rank excluded them from a seat in the House of Lords.

At the present time, it is confessed on all hands that the House of Peers stands as much in need of reform as the House of Commons did, before it was purified by Earl Grey. The argument which disfranchised the rotten boroughs affirmed that the elective franchise was a trust, and not a property. The same constitutional argument may be applied, with equal, nay with encreased force, to the hereditary legislators, for the old law annexed two conditions absolute to the peerage; first, that every lord should reside on the lands of his barony: secondly, that he should possess sufficient freehold to maintain his dignity. Now, let these two conditions be applied to the modern peers, and a wholesome reform, bottomed on the spirit of the constitution, would be at once effected. We are far from thinking that such a reform would go far enough, because hereditary legislation is founded in folly, and quite at variance with the spirit of the age, and the existing interests of society. No legislative power ought to exist but what is delegated, for assumed power is usurpation and tyranny.

• Coke's Reports, Part 6, p. 52.

Vol. I.-No. 3.

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But even the application of the old law would root out many abuses, and prepare the way for ulterior improvements; and prudence admonishes all clear-sighted reformers to take their political debt by instalments.

ON CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

THERE is no man of feeling, who has any idea of justice, but would confess, upon the principles of reason and common sense, that if he were to be put to unnecessary and unmerited pain by another man, his tormentor would do him an act of injustice: and from a sense of injustice in his own case, now that he is the sufferer, he must naturally infer, that, if he were to put another man of feeling to the same unnecessary and unmerited pain which he now suffers, the injustice committed by himself towards his neighbour would be exactly the same as the injustice of his tormentor towards him. Therefore, the man of feeling and justice will not put another man to unmerited pain, because he will not do that to another, which he is unwilling should be done unto himself. Nor will he take any advantage of his own superiority or strength, or of the accidents of fortune, to abuse them to the oppression of his inferior; because he knows that in the article of feeling all men are equal: and that the differences of strength or station are as much the gifts and appointments of God, as the differences of understanding, colour, or stature. Superiority of rank or station may give ability to communicate happiness, and seems so intended, for we are admonished "that unto whom much is given, of them much will be required;" but it can give no right to inflict unnecessary or unmerited pain. A wise man would impeach his own wisdom, and be unworthy of the blessing of a good understanding, if he were to infer from thence that he had a right to despise or make game of a fool, or put him to any degree of mental pain. The stupidity of the fool ought rather to excite his compassion, and it demands the wise man's care and attention to the deficiencies of him who cannot protect himself.

It has pleased God, the Father of all men, to cover some with white skins, and others with black skins: but as there is neither merit nor demerit in complexion, the white man (notwithstanding the barbarity of prejudice and custom) can have no right, by virtue of his colour, to enslave, and tyrannize over, a black man; nor has a fair man any right to abuse, despise, or insult a brown man. Nor has a tall man, by virtue of his stature, any right to trample a dwarf beneath his foot. For whether a man is wise or foolish, white or black, fair or brown, tall or short, and we may add, rich or poor, (for it is no more a man's choice to be poor, than it is to be a fool, or a dwarf, or black, or tawney,) such he is by God's appointment; and, abstractedly considered, he is on these accounts neither a subject for pride, nor an object for contempt. Now, if

among men, the differences of their mental powers, of their complexion, of their stature, of their wealth, do not give to any one man a right to abuse or insult any other man on account of these differences; for the same reason, a man can have no natural right to ill-treat or torment a beast, merely because a beast has not the mental powers of a man. For such as the man is, he is but as God made him; and the very same is true of the beast. Neither of them can lay claim to any intrinsic merit, for being such as they are; for, before they were created, it was impossible that either of them could deserve any particular mode of treatment; and at their creation, their shape, perfections, defects, and general qualities were fixed, and bounds set which they cannot pass. And being such, neither more nor less than God made them, there is no more demerit in a beast's being a beast, than there is merit in a man's being a man; that is to say, there is neither merit nor demerit in either of them.

A brute is an animal no less sensible of pain than a man. He has similar nerves and organs of sensation; and his cries and groans, in case of violent impressions on his body, though he cannot utter his complaints by speech, are as strong indications to us of his sensibility to pain, as the cries and groans of a human being, whose language we do not understand. Now, as pain is what we are all averse to, our sensibility of pain should teach us to commiserate it in others, to alleviate it if possible, but never wantonly or unmeritedly to inflict it. As the differences among men in the above particulars are no bar to their feelings, so neither does the difference of the shape of a brute from that of a man exempt the brute from feeling; at least, we have no ground to suppose it. But shape or figure is as much the appointment of God, as complexion or stature. And if the difference of complexion or stature does not convey to one man a right to abuse, or despise, another man, the difference of shape between a man and a brute, cannot give to any man the right to abuse or torment a brute. For He that made man and man to differ in complexion or stature, made man and brute to differ in shape or figure. And in this case likewise, there is neither merit nor demerit; every creature, whether man or brute, bearing that shape which Supreme Wisdom judged most expedient to answer the end for which the creature was ordained. With regard to the modification of the mass of matter of which an animal is formed, it is accidental as to the creature itself: we mean, that it was not in the power or will of the creature to choose, whether it should sustain the shape of a brute, or of a man; and yet, whether it be of one shape or the other; or whether it be inhabited by, or animated by, the soul of a brute, or the soul of a man; the substance, or matter, of which the creature is composed, would be equally susceptible of feeling.* It is

It is of no consequence as to the case now before us, whether the soul is, as some think, only a power, which cannot exist without the body; or, as is generally supposed, a spiritual essence, that can exist, distinct and separate from the body.

solely owing to the good pleasure of God, that we are created men, or animals in the shape of men. For, He who forned man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life that he might become a living soul, and endued him with a sense of feeling, could, if he had so pleased, by the same plastic power, have cast the very same dust into the mould of a beast; which, being animated by the life-giving breath of its Maker, would have become a living soul in that form; and in that form would have been as susceptible of pain, as in the form of a man. And if, in brutal shape, we had been endued with the same degree of reason and reflection which we now enjoy; and other beings, in human shape, should take upon them to torment, abuse, and barbarously ill-treat us, because we were not made in their shape, the injustice and cruelty of their behaviour to us would be self-evident; and we should naturally infer, that, whether we walk upon two legs or four; whether our heads are prone or erect; whether we are naked or covered with hair; whether we have tails or no tails, horns or no horns, long ears or round ears; or, whether we bray like an ass, speak like a man, whistle like a bird, or are mute as a fish; nature never intended these distinctions, as foundations for the right of tyranny or oppression. But perhaps it will be said, that it is absurd to draw such an inference from a mere supposition that a man might have been a brute, and a brute might have been a man; for, the supposition itself is chimerical, and has no foundation in nature, and all arguments should be drawn from fact, and not from fancy of what might be, or what might not be. To this we reply in few words, and generally; that all cases and arguments, deduced from the important and benevolent precept of doing to others as we would be done unto, necessarily require such kind of suppositions; that is, they suppose the case to be otherwise than it really is. For instance: a rich man is not a poor man; yet the duty plainly arising from the precept is this—that the man who is now rich, ought to behave to the man who is now poor, in such a manner as the rich man, if he were poor, would desire that the poor man, if he were rich, should behave towards him. Here is a case which does not in fact exist between these two men, for the rich man is not a poor man, nor is the poor man a rich man, yet the supposition is necessary to enforce and illustrate the precept; and the reasonableness of it is allowed. Now, if the supposition is reasonable in one case, it is reasonable, or at least not contrary to reason, in all cases to which this general precept can extend, and in which the duty enjoined by it can and ought to be performed. Therefore, though it be true that a man is not a horse, yet as a horse is a subject within the precept, that is to say, a horse is capable of receiving benefit by it, the duty enjoined in it extends to the man, and amounts to this-do you, who are a man, so treat your horse, as you would be willing to be treated by your master, in case that you were a horse. We see no absurdity or false reasoning in this interpretation of the precept, nor