“After many centuries of usefulness,” so it is said, “the horse is about to be retired from active service as an agent in locomotion.” Electricity, petrol, and cable tramcars are to be the chief factors in this change, which will replace horsepower by the greater energies of mechanical invention, and will make it possible to ride a hundred miles “for about a shilling.” Looking at the matter as humanitarians we are heartily pleased at the prospect. To be sure, it is not very creditable to the good feelings of mankind that, “after many centuries of usefulness,” the horse should be “retired,” not because we are ashamed of the ill-usage he has received, but because we have discovered a cheaper method of traction; nor is it pleasant to reflect on the countless myriads of undeserved blows and curses that have descended on our faithful friend and helper during the period of his service. But letting that pass, as one of the many blots with which the pages of history are disfigured, we rejoice to think that the wretched system of horse-traction is perhaps drawing to a close, and we trust that the present century will see it legally prohibited in England, as dog-traction has already been.
No doubt we shall hear a lot of sentimental talk about the picturesque beauty of the horse, the ugliness of machinery, and so forth; but we shall know what to reply to such[100] “æsthetic” arguments, with the experience before us (or, let us hope, behind us) of the hackney-cab, the tramcar, and the tradesman’s cart and wagon. The usage of the horse, in our so-called civilization, has reached a pitch of sordid deformity which, even if regarded solely from the point of view of the artist, makes it impossible to advance any valid argument against the motor-car. However unromantic such mechanical conveyance may be, it will at least save us from the unseemly sights that have outraged every sense of beauty, decency and humaneness. The motor will not be recklessly overloaded; it will not be cursed, and thrashed, and wrenched out of its natural shape by way of an outlet for the savage temper of its driver; for curiously enough, the lifeless machine will be treated with far more respect, and in a far more rational spirit, than the living animal, and the conductor who should ill-use a car, as horses are now ill-used, would be promptly conveyed to the nearest police-cell or lunatic-asylum.
But what, it may be asked, is to become of the horse himself, in the new age of machinery? Is “retirement,” in his case, to be the same thing as extinction? We do not know; but we know this—that, in the case of our “beasts of burden,” merciful extinction is a preferable fate to what is humorously called “preservation.” Centuries hence, perhaps, some learned antiquarian will reconstruct, from such anatomical data as may be available, the gaunt, misshapen, pitiable figure of the London cab-horse, and a more humane and enlightened posterity will shudder at the sight of what we still regard as a legitimate “agent in locomotion.”
From The Humanitarian.
1896.