Kindness to Animals (1865)

AUTHOR: Child, Lydia Maria

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen)

In this short piece, Child links animal welfare to Abolition. As the title suggests, she advocates for animal welfare and kindness towards animals. For Child, animal welfare intersects with Abolition via the abusive treatment of slaves, which is often analogous to abuses of domestic animals. As a result, the former are often compassionate towards the latter, as Child makes clear at the beginning (with Toussaint L'Overture offering a particularly salient example):

But the Father of all created beings made dumb creatures to enjoy existence in their way, as he made human beings to enjoy life in their way. We do wrong in his sight if we abuse them, or keep them without comfortable food and shelter. The fact that they cannot speak to tell of what they suffer makes the sad expression of their great patient eyes the more touching to any compassionate heart. Fugitive slaves, looking out mournfully and wearily upon a cold, unsympathizing world, have often reminded me of overworked and abused oxen; for though slaves were endowed by their Creator with the gift of speech, their oppressors have made them afraid to use it to complain of their wrongs. In fact, they have been in a more trying situation than abused oxen, for they have been induced by fear to use their gift of speech in professions of contentment with their bondage. Therefore, those who have been slaves know how to sympathize with the dumb creatures of God; and they, more than others, ought to have compassion on them. The great and good Toussaint L'Overture was always kind to the animals under his care, and I consider it by no means the smallest of his merits (97).

The capacity for speech, while possibly the most important, is not the only difference between the animal and the human. For Child, there is a hierarchy of beings, and the human is undoubtedly at the top. But this does not preclude further analogies between animal and human behavior. These analogies become particularly pertinent in abusive relationships. Accordingly, for Child,

if animals are bad-tempered and stubborn, it is owing to their having been badly treated when they were young. When a horse has his mouth hurt by jerking his bridle, it irritates him, as it irritates a man to be violently knocked about; and in both cases such treatment produces an unwillingness to oblige the tormentor. Lashing a horse with a whip, to compel him to draw loads too heavy for his strength, makes him angry and discouraged; and at last, in despair of getting any help for his wrongs, he stands stock still when he finds himself fastened to a heavy load, and no amount of kicking or beating will make him stir. He has apparently come to the conclusion that it is better to be killed at once than to die daily. Slaves, who are under cruel taskmasters, also sometimes sink down in utter discouragement, and do not seem to care for being whipped to death. The best way to cure the disheartened and obstinate laborer is to give him just wages and kind treatment; and the best way to deal with the discouraged and stubborn horse is to give him light loads and humane usage (98).

Child then discusses a specific case of horse abuse in order to showcase how “[b]y gentle and rational treatment better characters are formed, both in animals and human beings” (99) and that “reasonable and kind treatment will generally produce a great and beneficial change in vicious animals as well as in vicious men” (100).