Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/664

644 fundamental to ethics a principle which once prevailed universally in politics and still survives in the legal fiction that the king can do no wrong. Louis XIV of France firmly believed himself to be the rightful and absolute owner of the lives and property of his subjects. He held that his rights as monarch were paramount and extinguished theirs, that they possessed nothing too sacred for him, and the leading moralists and statists of his day confirmed him in this extravagant opinion of his royal prerogatives. All the outrages which the mad Czar, Ivan the Terrible, perpetrated on the inhabitants of Novgorod and Moscow, man has felt and for the most part still feels himself justified in inflicting on domestic animals and beasts of venery.

It is only within the last century that legislators have begun to recognize the claims of brutes to just treatment and to enact laws for their protection. Torturing a beast, if punished at all, was treated solely as an offense against property, like breaking a window, barking a tree, or committing any other act known in Scotch law as "malicious mischief." It was regarded, not as a wrong done to the suffering animal, but as an injury done to its owner, which could be made good by the payment of money. Not until a little more than a hundred years ago was such an act changed from a civil into a criminal offense, for which a simple fine was not deemed a sufficient reparation. It was thus placed in the category of crimes which, like arson, burglary, and murder, are wrongs against society, for which no pecuniary restitution or compensation can make adequate atonement.

Even this legislative reform is by no means universal. The criminal code of the German Empire still punishes with a fine of not more than fifty thalers any person "who publicly, or in such wise as to excite scandal, maliciously tortures or barbarously maltreats animals." This sort of cruelty is classified with drawing plans of fortresses, using official stamps and seals, and putting royal or princely coats of arms on signs without permission, making noises, which disturb the public peace, and playing games of hazard on the streets or market places. The man is punished, not because he puts the animal to pain, but because his conduct is offensive to his fellow-men and wounds their sensibilities. The law sets no limit to his cruelty, provided he may practice it in private.

Again, in all enactments regulating the transportation of live stock our legislation is still exceedingly defective. The great majority of people have no conception of the unnecessary and almost incredible suffering inflicted by man upon the lower animals in merely conveying them from one place to another in order to meet the demands of the market. It is well known that German shippers of sheep to England often lose one third of their consignment by suffocation, owing to overcrowding and imperfect ventilation.