University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.

THE preceding painting may be considered as extravagant;
and exceeding all probability; the voting of
beasts. But is it a new thing in the history of government
that the right of suffrage should be made to depend
upon property. No man shall be entitled to a vote
unless he is worth so much, say some of the constitutions.
In this case is it not his property that votes? If
this property consists in cattle, can it be said that his cattle
do not vote? Ergo, a cow or a horse, in some communities
have the privilege of a vote in the enacting
laws. If some of them, who belong to hard hearted masters,
knew of this privilege, and could exercise it to the
whole extent of their wishes, they would stipulate with
the candidate, for milder treatment in the drudgery in
which they are employed. I have seen many a horse,
that considering matters individually; and apart from
the nature, I have thought more respectable than the
owner; and yet this horse most unmercifully treated.
The only universally distinguishing criterion of
humanity, that I know is, the mild treatment of every
creature that has feeling, and is in our power. This
ought to be inculcated as a moral duty. But as to
beasts in propria persona, voting, not just giving in a
ticket for themselves, but standing by, and neighing or
grunting, or grinning. It may be thought too much
yet. But why should it be thought altogether out of
the compass of possibility. After what I have seen and
heard of mankind, I should not wonder at such a thing
taking place. Of what absurdity is not the human mind
capable. Who would think it possible were it not a
fact established by ten thousand testimonies, that human
sacrifice could ever have been thought acceptable to the
divinity? It is easy to trace the origin of the idea, and
the policy of the sacrifice of cattle; because it facilitated
to an order of men who did not labour, the means of livelihood.
And unless we suppose that the custom of human
sacrifice began amongst men that were cannibals,
I am at a loss to account for it. It may be considered as
still more absurd, that a creature, supposed rational, as
man, could be so far irrational as to think that the punishment

of himself could be acceptable to divinity, unless
taken in this light, that the present smart might help
weak minds to refrain from the like wrong they have
done; connecting the flagellation with the memory of
it. Hence it may be said, that it is not out of nature,
to ascribe any thing however absurd to the creature
man.

The line of the poet Pope applied to an individual,
may be parodied, and applied to the whole species.

If it should be found, as I hope it will, some hundred
years hence, that no innovator in a republican government,
has at that time thought of extending suffrage in
this manner, will he be sure that it is not owing to my
ridicule that the thing has not taken place? If a chapter
like this had been written in the course of the revolution
from the government of Britain, representing the
body of the people in some state, as reprobating the common
law, and calling out for its abrogation, would it not
have been thought extravagant, and intended as a burlusque
upon the republican institutions of the country?
And yet we have seen this actually pressed and not far
from being carried. It amounts to the same thing as
having no law at all. For it is experience that has made
that law; dictated by the wants of man successively
brought to view. And to begin again, we must be in the
situation of those who had no law; and therefore the proposition
was to be without law; and to have law only as
a legislature, from occasion to occasion, could enact.—
the case that first happened, could have no principle,
that could apply to it; that must be provided for the second:
and at the end of a thousand years, we might
have such a body of laws, as that which is proposed to
be abolished. I say we might have; but it would be a
rare chance if we should: for it would require the continuance
of a free government all that time to give it.—
How should a man be sensible of this, that had not traced
the history of that law, and examined the nature of it?
It could not be expected from one who had confounded
its perversions with the law itself. If when the constitutions
of these states were formed, after much reflection
of the ablest judges, and the people had solemnly, and
deliberately adopted them, it had been stated by any
writer, that in the short period, of perhaps not more than

twenty years, innovators, not born in the country, or born
late, and having no experience of what had past, should
assume the language of what they call reform, to the
extent they have done in some places, would it be believed?
Nay, would it not have been rejected as outraging
all probability? Suppose it had been a part of
the prediction that these innovators should come, the
principal of them, from the country with whom we were
then at war, and these not the most intelligent of them,
and that the body of our people should be wrought upon,
in any degree by their representation, would it have been
thought at all likely to happen? There is no knowing
to what the love of novelty may bring the human mind.
It is a strange compound of the rational and irrational,
and it is only by turns that the rational predominates.—
“Thinkest thou me a dog, that I can do these things?”
said Hazael. Thinkest thou me a beast, may one say to
me, that I could advocate the suffrages of beasts, or of
giving them the elective franchise? Yes: human nature,
I do think you capable of being brought to such absurdity,
or to any thing else you please to call it. It is true,
I do not see you at this moment offering up your children,
or even enemies, as sacrifices to please a divinity,
which out-herods Herod, in all conceptions, yet I hear
doctrines published, and see them in books, which are
still worse. For their divinities, with the exception of
the case of Jeptha and his daughter, were the false divinities
of the heathen world; and might be supposed to
delight in the miseries of mortals; though what good
they could get by that, I cannot comprehend. But in
the doctrines which I have in view, a good deity, and
even represented as good, by these blasphemers, without
knowing it, is holden out as having created existences
the sum of whose misery may exceed the happiness.
Nay, even the escape from the excess of misery above
that of happiness, may depend upon a charm. For the
idea of felicity in a future state depending upon subtilties
of creeds, is placing it upon the mere accident of situation
and the casualty of belief. Yet if one were to
deny to some doctors the truth of what they teach, they
would be disposed to treat the individual as not a good
citizen. It is true, they would only say, they did not
think him a good citizen. But I would say to them, that
I did not think them Christians at all, so far as regarded
opinion, whatever they might be in practice. For the
Christian religion is a system of humanity, and truth; and
the great object of it is to secure morality amongst men.
It has no metaphysics in the nature of it; but is intelligible
to a child, though catechisms are not.