Bibliothèque mondiale du cheval

« « The four hearse horses especially reared and pranced, and showed their highest action, as if they knew a man was dead, and triump hed in it. "They break us, drive us, ride us, ill-treat, abuse, and maim us for their pleasure. But they die, Hurrah ! they die !" »- Charles Dickens, from Martin Chuzzlewit .
When the first edition of my little pamphlet, Bits and Bearing Reins ,’ was published, only last year, I hoped to call the attention of some of the owners and drivers of carriage horses to the unnecessary pain inflicted by severe bits and gag bearing-reins, as they were then used; but I did not expect that my appeal would be so warmly responded to, or so soon produce a visibly good effect. That result could not have been obtained by my single efforts : they have been liberally and largely aided by many friends, known and unknown, and especially by the Press, not only in England, but in Scotland and Ireland. The spark of benevolence which I endeavoured to light, they fanned into a flame. Newspapers, journals, magazines, sporting and religious papers, came forward to denounce the cruelty of the present fashionable system of treating horses, and to encourage me to proceed in my endeavours to obtain a more humane and sensible method.
It is about two years since I entered upon this crusade, and no one can guess the amount of labour and anxiety it involves. It seems a small subj’ect, and yet it extends everywhere. In the scale of created beings, next to the human race, certainly comes the horse. For intelligence, usefulness, sensitiveness, he is second only to man, and withal he is so perfectly helpless, so easily subdued, less capable of self-defence than almost any other animal-his usual fate is to have his years of health and strength unnaturally shortened by injudicious and cruel treatment, and when age comes on, and strength fails, to be put to harder work, with coarser and less food, and more comfortless stall, going down and down, till death releases him. Many of these valuable animals, for which hundreds of pounds are now given, will in a short time be sold for as many shillings, even by people who have had years of work out of them, and could well afford mercifully to insure them from future hardship, by having them put to a quick and painless death. No other animal has so hard a life, or serves his taskmaster so willingly and so generously; he acts a conspicuous part in the affairs of human life; we want him at every turn; for drudgery, for pleasure, for show, we call in his aid; therefore let us not needlessly add to his burdens by wanton cruelty, or wilful ignorance.[…] » Présentation de l’éditeur (1876)

« London, 1877. » Huth (1887)