PREFACE.

To place before the public an Essay stamped with a certain mark of inferiority by the tribunal of a public competition, demands, in the plainest manner, an apology. Upon all the usual subjects of discussion which have been examined, and are known so well, that the conscious heart ever accuses the deficient practice, an adequate excuse with difficulty might be found. But on the duties the following pages are intended to enforce, much less has been written than they deserve, and the just line of conduct but partially discriminated. Faults are committed with an unconsciousness of error, sometimes even with a belief of innocence and propriety.

The creatures we are called on to defend, are the Pariahs of another caste, and suffer from prejudice. Children of bondage: once dwellers with us in the paternal home of paradise; like the

offspring of Hagar they have been banished to the wilderness, and scattered like arrows to the four winds of heaven. Their hand is against every man, and every man's hand is against them. The firstborn of the earth: figuratively, the hairy children of creation, they have been disinherited by the smooth Jacob; and driven from our society, like other slaves; while with one of slavery's accursed features, we hate the servile fear we have ourselves engendered. The voices only of a few have ever been raised in their defence, and in the host of human literature their interests form comparatively an uncultivated field. It might be urged that inferiority is not worthlessness, nor all exertions useless which do not reach the goal. But this is not the ground of our excuse. On the reverse, had it been ascertained this treatise were the meanest and the poorest effort in the animal behalf; it would best perform the end of inviting others to communicate what they have written; who with greater modesty though superior merit, may not have dared to plunge into the uncertain stream, and risk the imputation of assuming rashness; and set an example which might open to the public eye all that has been composed, where many flowers must be scattered, though all the necessary conditions which

might warrant the sanction of a public body, and shelter with impunity under its approval, may not have been fulfilled. It is unnecessary to disclaim a motive of dissatisfaction or of appeal, the fondest of the irritable genus could not rebuke the justice of the tribunal-to the decision of which he voluntarily had submitted. On the contrary, the Author can do no less than offer a sincere acknowledgment for the satisfaction and advantage the composing this Essay has afforded him. Dispute is odious amid those who claim a more refined humanity.

In gracing this volume with the advocacy of an illustrious individual, without which record of the first appeal to law, no treatise would be complete, a sanction and an interest is thrown over the whole subject, which nothing could equally confer. In the momentous events which at the time and subsequently, absorbed the attention of Europe, his efforts passed comparatively unnoticed; and that so great a man was the first senator who vindicated the legal claims of animals is by no means adequately known. Covered with distinction, no visionary of the closet, but steeped in affairs, and conspicuous in them all; occupied with important human interests, from which only the strong power of a

just and warrantable feeling could have raised his mind: this speech affords at once a noble monument to his memory, and the force of unanswerable authority to the subject which it treats of; confuting by his name that accusation too frequently indulged, that sentiments of humanity to inferior beings are the depraved delusion of an idle and frivolous mind.

While the arguments which opposed his efforts have become a fading shadow, buried with their authors beneath the unforgiving grave, and recollected only by the contrast of his humanity, an everlasting tree of mercy springs above his tomb, and shades with grateful freshness the memory of him who first for beasts asserted a claim to legal surety. Nor is there an event more singular and sublime, more foreign to the class of party and its pretended ends; than that first freedom of spirit, which, setting foot on prejudice and blind custom, dared to look with candour on these humble slaves, and made the senate walls reverberate in their defence; with accents so different to the grating contests of the world and its self-interested voice, that we exclaim,

"This is no mortal business, nor no sound

That the earth owes."