THE JESUITS AND CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.
[TO TEE EDITOR OF TR& "SPICTATOR."]
Sta,—The following passage from a leading article in the Voce della Verita, the Jesuit organ in Rome, will interest the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The out. burst of indignation is occasioned by a circular of the Minister of the Interior to the Prefects, calling their attention to cases of cruelty to animals, one of the most grateful signs of Italian progress to humane people which has lately appeared. "But what is this sentimentalism which is being introduced, beyond all reason, in favour of beings created by God in an inferior state, and given to mankind without the power of insisting on any rights ? The farther people go in the corrup- tion of their ways, the more they abound in tenderness for the brutes, even to the formation of societies for their protection, with laws and regulations which put to shame those of the most important societies for the relief of human miseries. The most furious advocates of the wellbeing of the beasts are the Protestants and the Freemasons, and it may be said that there is not an institution of that kind in which there does not enter as the basis a profession, implicit or explicit, of scepticism or materialism The Protestant and Masonic sentimentalism for the beasts has come to such a point as to merit a comment such as we have given it. May it suffice to put on their guard the Catholics against certain societies for the protection of animals, and against the publicity given them by the, sometimes unconscious, agents of Protestantism and Masonry. The religion which we profess suffices to teach to what point goes the permissible use of animals, and where begins and is abhorrent the abuse. And for our civilisation the laws that affect the maltreatment of brutes are sufficient without need of societies with their relative presidents and presidentesses and all the apparatus of a legislation which shows the intimate relation between certain protectors and protected." Considering the horrible maltreatment of animals of which we who live in Rome and other parts of Italy are the sickened witnesses every day to such a point that residence here becomes painful to tender-hearted people, which is never made the subject of any reproof or comment by the Catholic, clergy, and which even the laws existing are absolutely inert to prevent or mitigate, as we see every day, the boasting and brutality of the Voce della Verita forms an excellent com- mentary on either the influence or the humanity of the clergy. What is certain is that neither by law nor clergy is there any restraint put on the most cruel maltreatment of beasts of burthen in the streets of Rome or Naples, and that inter- ference by foreigners is so resented that, to instance one case, a friend of ours who ventured to call on a policeman to stop a driver's brutal treatment of his horse was fined twenty lire for interference with a man's occupation.—I am, Sir, &c., [Readers of Mr. Stillman's letter must not suppose, how. ever, that Northern Roman Catholics are in any sense more inclined to cruelty to animals than Northern Protestants. It is a question of race rather than of creed, of latitude rather than of dogma.—En. Spectator.]
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