Cowper, in his task, in speaking in praise of the country, takes occasion to express his disapprobation of one of the diversions in question.
"They love the country, and none else, who seek For their own sake its silence and its shade, Delights, which who would leave, that has a heart Susceptible of pity, or a mind, Cultur'd, and capable of sober thought, For all the savage din of the swift pack And clamours of the field? Detested sport That owes its pleasures to another's pain, That feeds upon the sobs and dying shrieks Of harmless nature, dumb, but yet endued With eloquence, that agonies inspire Of silent tears, and heart-distending sighs! Vain tears alas! and sighs, that never find A corresponding tone in jovial souls!"
In these sentiments of the poets the Quakers, as a religious body, have long joined. George Fox specifically reprobated hunting and hawking, which were the field diversions of his own time. He had always shewn, as I stated in the introduction, a tender disposition to brute-animals, by reproving those, who had treated them improperly in his presence. He considered these diversions, as unworthy of the time and attention of men, who ought to have much higher objects of pursuit. He believed also, that real christians could never follow them; for a christian was a renovated man, and a renovated man could not but know the works of creation better, than to subject them to his abuse.
Edward Burroughs, who lived at the same time, and was an able minister of the society, joined George Fox in his sentiments with respect to the treatment of animals. He considered that man in the fall, or the apostate man, had a vision so indistinct and vitiated that he could not see the animals of the creation, as he ought, but that the man, who was restored, or the spiritual christian, had a new and clear discernment concerning them, which would oblige him to consider and treat them in a proper manner.
This idea of George Fox and of Edward Burroughs seems to have been adopted or patronized by the Poet Cowper.
"Thus harmony, and family accord, Were driven from Paradise; and in that hour The seeds of cruelty, that since have swell'd To such gigantic and enormous growth, Were sown in human natures fruitful soil. Hence date the persecution and the pain, That man inflicts on all inferior kinds, Regardless of their plaints. To make him sport, To gratify the frenzy of his wrath, Or his base gluttony, are causes good, And just, in his account, why bird and beast Should suffer torture--"