20 OCTOBER 1855, Page 14

THE JEW-BUTCHER'S CASE.

STRANGE are the caprices which fasten odium upon particular in- dividuals and leave the thousands or millions of others who are not distinguishable from the few free from blame. Here is Van- koff Cohen gibbeted before the public by a Royal Society for un- lawfully and cruelly ill-treating and torturing a certain ox.

Van-

koff has done nothing more than every person of his race in his business, which is a strictly lawful business, has done from time immemorial,—a period in his case extending far beyond the epoch of Richard the Second. Yankoff is a Jewish butcher; and, errors excepted, circumstances considered, he slaughters oxen as Moses was understood to require that oxen should be slaughtered by the chosen people. Ever since the days of the Jewish lawgiver, it is supposed by that people, the solemn laws embodied in the iishna and Gemara have pronounced it to be necessary, moral, and pious, to slaughter oxen by veneseetion, in order to the complete exhaus- tion of the blood-vessels. According to the legend, an elucidation of which is circulated by the Society prosecuting, the custom ori- ginated in the propensity of the Jews to idolatry and demon-wor- ship; and their prae-Mosaic custom of setting apart the blood of beasts in order to appease their demons rendered it necessary for the faithful people to purify their own diet by rejecting that de- moniac bonne teethe. Here this was a custom originating in a sense of religious purity. It has now become odious and intoler- able in the eyes of a Christian society enforcing a statute of the English Parliament; so strikingly does the standard of virtue and mercy change with the lapse of ages. But there is at all events nothing which distinguishes Yankoff Cohen from the bulk of the Jewish people, and it is a simple caprice which stigmatizes hire especially. The object of the Society seems to have been to oblige the Jews to adopt " the Christian " mode of slaughter : but when the Christ- ian mode is explained, really it does not present that beautifully merciful aspect which we have expected. The Jewish butcher shaves the throat of the animal before he commences his phlebo- tomy, and the beast is some time in expiring. The Christian butcher knocks the animal down and cleaves the skull with a pole-axe, and then through the aperture he inserts a cane, which he twists about. The animal lingers under the process of veneseo- tion ; bat a medical man affirms that "pain is annihilated" by the blow of the pole-axe. How is this known? Has an ox ever been questioned upon the subject? There is indeed nothing more ob- scure than the condition of any animal, even human beings, under violent affections of the brain which are supposed to be attended by insensibility.

But if we judge entirely by the sensations of the animals, we might find it difficult to discover any mode of slaughtering which should not be cruel. The exhibition of anwsthetios is supposed to promote the infliction of death without pain ; but how does anaesthesia affect the meat ? Might it not only modify the form of cruelty by inflicting it upon the consumer of the meat instead of the slaughtered animal, and adding to the chances of poisoning already created by the practice of " blowier, " mutton? In fact, there seems no escape from cruelty by slaughtering, unless we resort to the vegetarian system ; yet how cruel would it not be thought to enforce that diet upon any but the enthusiasts who assemble at feasts of cabbages and apples ?

It is difficult to avoid cruelty, in this world, the quality is so thoroughly interwoven with the customs of society. Why is Yankoff Cohen picked out, when we scarcely look into the most peaceful home but we find cruelty in some form ? If we were to render the butcher merciful, we should sometimes detect the cook playing strange antics with eels and cod; the philanthropist him- self will go angling ; the high-mettled racer is consigned by 'his kind master to the knacker's yard, to feed for the last hours of his life upon the tail of his neighbour, perhaps his rival. The cheap advertiser keeps two-legged animals in his workshop, coerced to an employment which is slow suicide, by the scourge of present star- vation. Even the Ecclesiastical judges, with their highly po- lished intellects, penetrating into the most sacred recesses of the home, are so perplexed by the niceties of the subject, that the question which is the opprobrium of their courts is " What is cruelty ?" Ask an Ecclesiastical judge whether Yankoff Cohen can be taken as a picked specimen.

Half of the cruelty lies in the animus or malignity, the other half in the wantonness of the infliction. If a man ?nest do the act, and has no malice, he is not cruel, though he may be igno- rant; and in truth nine-tenths of the cruelties committed are ignorance more than malice. It is poor work, dealing in detail with those who are more victims of a barbarous custom than its authors. If we want to prevent worse cruelties than those prac- tised in the Jewish slaughterhouses, we must enlighten the un- derstandings by education, improve the taste by training, and teach the practicability of better usages. But we shall not hasten our reforms by appealing to the police magistrate and asking him to tear open the seed. The Jews are already a reforming people; perhaps few sections of society have done so much to come up with the spirit of the age. They are restrained, like many of us, by religious difficulties ; but we shall not enable them to surmount those difficulties if we enforce reforms in the shape of persecutions, and perpetuate the barbarisms we want to remove by consti- tuting the instruments martyrs and enlisting the very feelings of humanity in their defence.