A BRITISH NUISANCE.

Colonist, Issue 88, 24 August 1858, Page 3

A BRITISH NUISANCE.

When London was empty, I, wishing to enjoy a solitary ramble, left our populous and stirring agricultural village in Kent, swarming with about two hundred and thirty souls (infants in arms included), and after half an hour's walk to it, reached our railway station. At half-past ten in the morning T arrived at London Bridge.

I forced my way into the grand mart of literature, Paternoster Row. Here there were many stops, but I pushed on. Breathing awhile, as is natural at Amen Corner, my mind became filled with the vastness of the space I had thought so small.

I am addressed with rudeness : I am hustled by a ruffianly fellow in a dirty blue, darkly stained blouse, who wields a long ragged staff, and is driving round the corner, with many blows, several sorely distressed bullocks and about a score of panting sheep, al! pitifully bellowing and Wealing, towards a still narrower passage which runs up on my right hand to Newgate street, and passes by what was once the Royal College of Physicians, but is now shambles.

Following the track of the herd up the stialt, called Wa> wick-lane, I accordingly walked, and speedily found myself in 'the midst of filth, odious to nose and eyes. Here was Aye Marialane, haply so named from the expediency of putting up a prayer before entering these deadly regions; and here aga:n (only the emblem of the ragged staff remaining), the illustrious kingmaker, Warwick, left his name on a square, whence within a few years1 issued many handsome and U9eful volumes, and in which I had somewhere read that the keeper oftheEoyal conscience, the Lord Chancellor Truro, was bora and bred, whils^ being4 educated at the near school of St. Paul's. Close to the entrance into: this square, I observedra crowd.of five or six ill-conditioned fellows, and a dozen boys of eight, nine, or fourteen years old. They were all gazing earnestly on something that was doing in a dilapidated house, the door of which was open, while a wider uncasemented window also "enlarged the accommodation for spectators. The front division of the premises was occupied by three men butchering sheep; in the back compartment, : a little smaller, several others we;'e employed in killing bullocks. Education for the people costs money in Paternoster Piow. Education for the people was to be had gratis here. The gaol of Newgate is within a few hundred yards, with its cells tenanted by wife-abusers, burglars, murderers, child-slaughterers.

More, much more than sufficient for the day was the evil thereof. Little did I dream in tho morning when I left our pleasant lanes and verdant fields, sprinkled with flocks and herds, that my quiet ramble over a deserted town would lead me into scenes like these. To my rustic idea the evil of open slaughter-houses is gross and shameful; and it cannot be denied that its passive pc-rmission is calculated to be very hurtful to the children who assemble and meet together to witness these detestable spectacles. They must corrupt the heart and the head, and pave the way, by a training not to be withstood, to cruelty and crime. They ought to be proscribed, as bull-baiting, cockfighting, and other debasing sports have been abolished. Ido not censure necessary labor, or the honorable conduct of a most important traffic. It is against the abuse of the one, and the forfeiture of every claim to sufferance in the other that I raise my voice. Let the laborers perform their work as much out of the common view as possible—let-cruelty of every kind to animals be prohibited, watched, and punished—and drovers and butchers and their helpers be subject to the same, or, as the case demands, a sharper control than omnibus or cab men, and others of like condition, who ply their occupations openly amid the millions of the metropolis. Let their employers and solesmen be placed under more efficient surveillance. The creed of Mahomet is not particularly merciful^ yet there is recognised by the Mahometans the need of some reminder to the slaughterer of animals that he shall be gentle in performance of his duty, Mr. Lane, in his modern Egypt, published twenty years ago, informs us that according to the Moslem law, "An animal that is killed-for the food of man must be slaughtered in a peculiar manner: the personwho is about to perform the operation (instead of Newgate oaths and curses) must say, 'In the name of God! God is most great!' and then cut its throat (instantly and effectually), taking care to divide the windpipe, gullet, and carotid arteries. It is fordidden 'to employ, in this case, the phrase which is fio often made use of on other occasions, 'In the name of God the compassionate, the Merciful!' because the mention of the benevolent epithets would seem, like a mockery of the sufferings, which the animal is about to endure. Some persons in Egypt, but mostly women, when about to kill an animal for food, say, 'In the name of God, God is most great ? God give thee patience to endure the affliction He has allotted thee !'" I am no advocate for such ceremonial customs, which lose effect by repetition; but surely the contrast of the sentiment among people we speak of as uncivilised and barbarous, should convey something of a lesson and a reproach.-—House-hold Words, . ;