Puppies, whose lives were endangered by the Chancellor of the,
Exchequer's first proposal at the early age of two months, have been respited to six months' life ; while puppies of the more aristocratic order called "whelps,"—the minors, as it were, of the canine peerage, at least potential members of the Kennel of Hounds,—are to be spared to the age of twelve months without bringing down a tax upon their owners. This curious and quite indefensible exemption of the young dogs belonging to a pecu- liarly well-to-do, not to say wealthy, class of owners, was, of course, resisted in the House of Commons, and equally of course was resisted in vain. Sir A. Lusk,—who translated for dogs Burns's republican apophthegm, maintaining that "a dog's a dog for a' that,"—was one of a minority of only 48,-147 voting in favour of extending the immunity of whelps from taxation to double the age allowed to other dogs. Seldom has Parliament passed a shabbier bit of class legislation.
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