Lands discovered by a subject belong to the crown, bu I had conceived a few scruples with relation to the distributive justice of princes upon those occasions. For instance, a crew of pirates are driven by a storm they know not whither; at length a boy discovers land from the topmast; they go on shore to rob and plunder; they see a harmless people, are entertained with kindness; they give the country a new name; they take formal possession of it for their king; they set up a rotten plank or a stone for a memorial; they murder two or three dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more, by force, for a sample, return home and get their pardon. Here commences a new dominion acquired with a title by divine right. Ships are sent with the first opportunity; the natives driven out or destroyed; their princes tortured to discover their gold; a free license given to all acts of inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of its inhabitants; and this execrable crew of butchers, employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony, sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous people.

*THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.

A horrid vision seiz'd my head,
I saw the graves give up their dead!
Amaz'd, confus'd, its fate unknown,
The world stands trembling at the throne;
While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens, and said:
"Offending race of human kind,

By nature, reason, learning, blind;
You who, through frailty, stepp'd aside;
And you who never fell from pride:
You who in different sects were shamm'd,
And come to see each other damn'd:
(So some folk told you, but they knew
No more of Jove's designs than you)
-The world's mad business now is o'er,
And I resent these pranks no more.
-I to such blockheds set my wit!
I damn such fools!-Go, go, you're bit."

BERNARD DE Mandeville.

A luxury the poor enjoy, that is not looked upon as such, and which there is no doubt but the wealthiest in a golden age would abstain from, is their making use of the flesh of animals to eat. In what concerns the fashions and manners of the ages men live in, they never examine into the real worth or merit of the cause, and generally judge of things not as their reason, but as custom directs them. Time was when the funeral rites in the disposing of the dead, were performed by fire, and the carcasses of the greatest emperors were burnt to ashes.

If it was not for this tyranny which custom usurps over us, men of any tolerable good nature could never be reconciled to the killing of so many animals, for their daily food, as long as the bountiful earth so plentifully provides them with varieties of vegetable dainties. I know that reason excites our compassion but faintly, and therefore I would not wonder how men should so little commiserate such imperfect creatures as cray-fish, oysters, cockles, and indeed all fish in general: as they are mute, and their inward formation, as well as outward figure, vastly different from ours, they express themselves unintelligibly to us, and therefore it is not strange that their grief should not affect our understanding which it cannot reach; for nothing stirs us to pity so effectually, as when the symptoms of misery strike immediately upon our senses, and I have seen people moved at the noise a live lobster makes upon the spit, that could have killed half a dozen fowls with pleasure. But in such perfect animals as sheep and oxen, in whom the heart, the brain and nerves differ so little from ours, and in whom the separation of the spirits from the blood, the organs of sense, and consequently feeling itself, are the same as they are in human creatures; I cannot imagine how a man not hardened in blood and massacre, is able to see a violent death, and the pangs of it, without concern. In answer to this, most people will think it sufficient to say, that all things being allowed to be made for the service of man, there can be no cruelty in putting creatures to the use they were designed for; but I have heard men make this reply, while their Nature within them has reproached them with the falsehood of the assertion. There is of all

the multitude not one man in ten but what will own, (if he was not brought up in a slaughter-house,) that of all trades he could never have been a butcher; and I question whether ever any body so much as killed a chicken without reluctancy the first time. Some people are not to be persuaded to taste of any creatures they have daily seen and been acquainted with, while they were alive; others extend their scruple no further than to their own poultry, and refuse to eat what they fed and took care of themselves; yet all of them will feed heartily and without remorse on beef, mutton, and fowls, when they are bought in the market. In this behaviour, methinks, there appears something like a consciousness of guilt, it looks as if they endeavored to save themselves from the imputation of a crime (which they know sticks somewhere) by removing the cause of it as far as they can from themselves; and I can discover in it some strong remains of primitive pity and innocence, which all the arbitrary power of custom, and the violence of luxury, have not yet been able to conquer.

When to soften the flesh of male animals, we have by castration prevented the firmness their tendons, and every fibre would have come to without it, I confess, I think it ought to move a human creature, when he reflects upon the cruel care with which they are fattened for destruction. 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 that 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 eyes become dim and languid, and behold his strugglings, gasps, and last efforts for life, the certain signs of his approaching fate? When a creature has given such convincing and undeniable proofs of the terrors upon him, and the pains and agonies he feels, is there a follower of Descartes so inured to blood, as not to refute, by his miseration, the philosophy of that vain reasoner ?

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Justice recording the Voice of the People guided by Light Liberty and Truth.

These prints were engraved with the hope of in some degree correcting that barbarous treatment of animals, the very sight of which renders the streets of our metropolis so distressing to every feeling mind. If they have that effect in checking the progress of cruelty, I am more proud of being their author than I should be of having painted Raphael's Cartoons! Hogarth.

[The explanations are altered from those of John Trusler. A few additions to the plates are marked by brackets.]

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