Bugs and Beasts before the Law. the same footing and with the same rights which are possessed by all the other States. If this be not done, and if these people are to be governed by laws enacted by Con gress and enforced by the President, without their consent and against their protests, they, instead of being citizens and the equals of all other citizens, will become a subject province; and the people of the United States will be divided into two classes, one of which will be the rulers and the other the ruled; and what will this be if not a modified form of slavery? Anything dif ferent from absolute equality among the people so far as their political and civil rights are concerned is neither more nor less than slavery; and when it is remem
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bered that in order to abolish that institu tion within our borders we waged a war which cost us millions of dollars and caused the sacrifice of many precious lives, we are reluctant to believe that we are now about to re-establish it in another form, particu larly as according to Article XIII., of the Amendments of the Constitution it has been abolished. Let us hope that this question will receive from our legislators the careful consideration which its importance demands of them; and if they will but listen to the voice of reason, they cannot do otherwise than take such action in the premises as will be consistent with the fundamental prin ciples upon which our Government has here tofore been administered.
BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW. By E. P. Evans. II.
BEASTS were often condemned to be burned alive; and strangely enough, it was in the latter half of the seventeenth century, an age of comparative enlighten ment, that this cruel penalty was most frequently inflicted. Occasionally a merci ful judge adhered to the letter of the law by sentencing the culprit to be slightly singed, and then to be strangled before being burned. Sometimes they were con demned to be buried alive. Such was the fate suffered by two pigs in 1456, " on the vigil of the Holy Virgin " at Oppenheim on the Rhine, for killing a child. Animals were even put to the rack in order to extort confession. It is not to be supposed that the judge had the slightest expectation that any confession would be made: he wished simply to observe all forms prescribed by the law, and to set in motion the whole machinery of justice before pronouncing judgment. " The question," which in such
cases would seem to be only a wanton and superfluous act of cruelty, was nevertheless an important element in determining the final decision, since the death sentence could be commuted into banishment pro vided the criminal had not confessed under torture. The use of the rack was therefore a means of escaping the gallows. Appeals were sometimes made to higher tribunals, and the judgments of the lower courts an nulled or modified. In one instance a sow and a she-ass were condemned to be hanged; on appeal and after a new trial they were sentenced to be simply knocked on the head. In another instance an ap peal led to the acquittal of the accused. In 1266, at Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, a pig convicted of having eaten a child was publicly burned by order of the monks of Sainte Genevieve. In 1386, the tribunal of Falaise sentenced a sow to be mangled and maimed in the head and leg,
