Lord Thomas Erskine (1750-1823), a Scottish lawyer and member of the British Parliament, was known for his passionate defense of civil liberties. As a member of the House of Lords, he focused his attention on the welfare of animals, claiming that outrages "too painful to describe" were being perpetrated upon animals, while the law did nothing because animals were considered only as property.
Lord Thomas Erskine's bill, the “Act to Prevent Malicious and Wanton Cruelty to Animals,” failed to pass into law when it was introduced in the British Parliament.
Nevertheless, the address he gave in the House on May 15, 1809 in support of the bill was the first major public speech on humane legislation, and remains, two hundred years later, one of the greatest ever delivered.
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| Lord Thomas Erskine (1750-1823), British Parliamentarian and early defender of the rights of animals. |
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When Erskine, a lawyer from Scotland, rose to speak, he explained that it was on “a subject which has long occupied my attention, and which I own to your lordships is very near my heart.” What followed was a powerful indictment of the era’s cruelty to animals and a realistic assessment of the landscape in which humane reformers had to operate.
Highlights of the first speech on humane legislation
The property status of animals was the fundamental problem, Erskine argued. “Animals are considered as property only; to destroy or to abuse them, from malice to the proprietor, or with an intention injurious to his interest in them, is criminal; but the animals themselves are without protection; the law regards them not substantively; they have no rights!”
A devoted petkeeper with a deep ecological sensitivity, Erskine had been concerned about cruelty to animals for several decades. Along with John Lawrence, Jeremy Bentham, and others considering the issue of animal rights, he believed that animals’ intelligence and feeling implied the existence of some rights. “Almost every sense bestowed upon man is equally bestowed upon them; seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking, the sense of pain and pleasure, the passions of love and anger, sensibility to kindness, and pangs from unkindness and neglect, are inseparable characteristics of their own natures as much as our own.”
Introduced on May 5, Erskine’s bill provided that “any person who shall maliciously wound or with wanton cruelty beat or otherwise abuse any horse, mare, ass, or ox shall be deemed to be guilty of a misdemeanor.”
Erskine offered a number of examples to support his concerns, citing the abuse of horses used to carry travelers from inn to inn, the sale of horses past their usefulness to slaughter yards, and the overloading of draft animals. But he trusted that he would not have to elaborate greatly on the cruelties then so common. “Your Lordships cannot have walked the streets, or travelled on the roads, without being perfectly masters of this part of the subject. You cannot but have been almost daily witnesses to most disgusting cruelties practiced upon beasts of carriage and burden.”
Lessons learned
Erskine’s focus on the routine cruelties of the street flowed directly from the lesson he had drawn from the failure of William Pulteney’s bill to prohibit bull baiting in 1800, the first try at anti-cruelty legislation. In his view, concentration on a single pursuit had been a mistake. “This bill says not a word about bull-baiting. I only include a bull in my catalogue of protected animals. They, therefore, who support the practice, may still support it successfully, if they can convince a Court and Jury, and the other Magistracies of their countrymen, that it does not fall within the description of willful and wanton cruelty.”
Setting his sights high, Erskine challenged his colleagues to see the benefits to humans of a law emphasizing the moral principle of kindness to animals. “The humanity you shall extend to the lower creation, will come abundantly round, in its consequences, to the whole human race. The moral sense which this law will awaken and inculcate, cannot but have a most powerful effect upon our feelings and sympathies for one another.”
The man, and the fate of the bill
A great orator, Erskine distinguished himself as a champion of personal liberties, defending in a series of high profile cases the principles of freedom of the press, trial by jury and the right to select one’s own counsel. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, he became famous for his defense of politicians and reformers charged with treason and other offenses by an increasingly repressive British government. Erskine successfully defended Thomas Paine, prosecuted in absentia for his controversial treatise The Rights of Man, which defended the French Revolution and attacked the institution of monarchy as immoral.
Erskine’s bill, endorsed by the Times of London and actively supported by William Wilberforce, Samuel Romilly, and other reform-minded politicians, passed the Lords after being modified to apply only to beasts of burden.
In the Commons, William Windham, who had scuttled Pulteney’s bill on bull baiting nine years before, again led the opposition, arguing that humanity should not be exacted by legal requirement. By just a few votes, the bill was defeated. By the time he introduced it again the following year, opposition had stiffened, defeat ensued once more, and Erskine did not try again.
Growing public concern for the welfare of animals
Cruelty to animals would not be the subject of further parliamentary discussion for more than a decade, but it was becoming a topic of growing public concern.
Erskine’s speech helped to fuel continued debate, and, in 1822, Erskine was among the legislators who passed Richard Martin’s “Act to Prevent the Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle,” ushering in a new era of lawmaking in support of animal protection. It was not lost on anyone involved that Erskine’s crucial framing of the issue thirteen years before had helped to make the moment possible.
This article was written by Bernard Unti, senior policy adviser and special assistant to the CEO of The HSUS, in recognition of the 200th anniversary of Erskine's speech in the House of Lords. Unti is the author of Protecting All Animals, a history of The HSUS, and is currently writing a book on the 19th century animal protection movement.
