The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Thursday, April 18, 1889. CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 288, 18 April 1889, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Thursday, April 18, 1889. CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s, Thy God's, and truth’s.

In the absence from Gisborne of a branch of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, we have got to rely almost solely on the police for (prosecutions being instituted in cases which are too monstrous to be allowed to go without punishment if sufficient proof can be adduced. The police, as a matter of course, have great difficulty in getting sufficient evidence together in cases of this kind, and they are entitled to the thanks of the public when they do succeed in substantiating a case. But the leniency with which these charges are treated when they do come before the Court—and it is only in rare instances that convictions can be obtained—is no deterrent whatever on the cruelty inflicted. At the Police Court yesterday a man was fined one pound, and another person a shilling, for attaching a young bull to the axle of his dray and then dragging the animal across the Kaiti, the poor brute being on its side. This is the second case lately in which charges have been sustained, but if those detected are allowed to get off so easily, they might just as well be left alone. The defence in this last case tried to prove that the animal was not hurt by the treatment it received, but when a man attempts to prove that such treatment is not cruel, we think it it is time he had a severe lesson as to what is cruelty. If he does not know that dumb animals have feelings, that they are sensitive to pain, then he ought to be taught that it is so, and the “ teaching ” that affects his pocket is the most satisfactory one. Fancy a man standing before the Court and saying that an animal used as that bull was, was not hurt! It is time that those cases which are brought before the Court, and proved, should be made a warning to other people who are equally to blame in their disregard for the feelings of the poor brutes around them. It is ridiculous, it is shameful, that people should be allowed to say in Court that dragging an animal on his side across a long bridge is not cruelty, and then that they should be let off with fines of a pound and a shilling. If there is no society in Gisborne prepared to take up cases of this nature, there is at least public opinion, to which we appeal.