Our County Magistrates seem to punish nothing so lightly as
-cruelty to animals. In a case commented on a few days ago by the Pall Mall, four boys, brought up at Balsall Heath Police Court, pelted a horse out of one field into another, where they got it into a corner, and threw big stones at it till it fell to the ground in the greatest agony, and it died of its injuries in a few days... For this pertinacious and wanton cruelty,—it was stated that clots of congealed blood nearly covered the horse, that its ribs were frightfully bruised, and its nostrils terribly lacerated, —two of the boys were fined 20s. and costs, or a month's im- prisonment; and the other two 10s. and costs, or a fortnight's im- prisonment. In short, for boys with means, this brutal bit of sport would have been atoned for by a £3 fine amongst them and the- coats of the prosecution. Yet could any offence be much more wanton, or much more likely to harden and brutalise the population of our villages? Imprisonment with hard labour, and no alternative of the nature of a fine, should be the least penalty inflicted for wanton torture of this disgraceful Lind. Apparently the magistrates themselves must generally be indiffer- ent, where the ignorant villagers are brutal.
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