CHAPTER CCXXVIII.

RATS.—PLAN OF THE LAUREATE SOUTHEY FOR LESSENING THEIR NUMBER.—THE DOCTOR'S HUMANITY IN REFUSING TO SELL POISON TO KILL VERMIN, AFTER THE EXAMPLE OF PETER HOPKINS HIS MASTER.—POLITICAL RATS NOT ALLUDED TO.—RECIPE FOR KILLING RATS.

I know that nothing can be so innocently writ, or carried, but may be made obnoxious to construction; marry, whilst I bear mine innocence about me, I fear it not.

BEN JONSON.

The Laureate Southey proposed some years ago in one of his numerous and multifarious books, three methods for lessening the number of rats, one of which was to inoculate some of these creatures with the small pox or any other infectious disease, and turn them loose. Experiments, he said, should first be made, lest the disease should assume in them so new a form, as to be capable of being returned to us with interest. If it succeeded, man has means in his hand which would thin the hyenas, wolves, jackals and all gregarious beasts of prey.

Considering the direction which the March of his Intellect has long been taking, it would surprise me greatly if the Laureate were now to recommend or justify any such plan. For setting aside the contemplated possibility of physical danger, there are moral and religious considerations which ought to deter us from making use of any such means, even for an allowable end.

Dr. Dove, like his master and benefactor Peter Hopkins before him, never would sell poison for destroying vermin. Hopkins came to that resolution in consequence of having been called as a witness upon a trial for poisoning at York. The arsenic had not been bought at his shop; but to prevent the possibility of being innocently instrumental to the commission of such a crime, he made it from that time a rule for himself, irrevocable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, that to no person whatever, on any account, would he supply ingredients which by carelessness or even by unavoidable accident might be so fatally applied.

To this rule his pupil and successor, our Doctor, religiously adhered. And when any one not acquainted with the rule of the shop, came there on such an errand, he used always, if he was on the spot, to recommend other methods, adapting his arguments to what he knew of the person's character, or judged of it from his physiognomy. To an ill-conditioned and ill-looking applicant he simply recommended certain ways of entrapping rats as more convenient, and more likely to prove efficacious: but to those of whom he entertained a more favourable opinion, he would hint at the cruelty of using poison, observing that though we exercised a clear natural right in destroying noxious creatures, we were not without sin if in so doing we inflicted upon them any suffering more than what must needs accompany a violent death.

Some good natured reader who is pestered with rats in his house, his warehouses, or his barns, will perhaps when he comes to this part of our book wish to be informed in what manner our Zoophilist would have advised him to rid himself of these vermin.

There are two things to be considered here, first how to catch rats, and secondly, how to destroy them when caught. And the first of these questions is a delicate one, when a greater catch has recently been made than any that was ever heard of before, except in the famous adventure of the Pied Piper at Hammel. Jack Robinson had some reputation in his day for his professional talents in this line, but he was a bungler in comparison with Mr. Peel.

The second belongs to a science which Jeremy the thrice illustrious Bentham calls Phthisozoics, or the art of destruction applied to noxious animals, a science which the said Jeremy proposes should form part of the course of studies in his Chrestomathic school. There are no other animals in this country who do so much mischief now as the disciples of Jeremy himself.

But leaving this pestilent set, as one of the plagues with which Great Britain is afflicted for its sins; and intending no offence to any particular Bishop, Peer, Baronet, Peer-expectant, or public man whatever, and protesting against any application of what may here be said to any person who is, has been, or may be included under any of the forementioned denominations, I shall satisfy the good-natured reader's desires, and inform him in what manner our Philosopher and Zoophilist (philanthropist is a word which would poorly express the extent of his benevolence) advised those who consulted him as to the best manner of taking and destroying rats. Protesting therefore once more, as is needful in these ticklish times that I am speaking not of the Pro-papist or Anti-Hanoverian rat, which is a new species of the Parliament rat, but of the old Norway or Hanoverian one, which in the last century effected the conquest of our island by extirpating the original British breed, I inform the humane reader that the Doctor recommended nothing more than the common rat-catcher's receit, which is to lure them into a cage by oil of carroways, or of rhodium, and that when entrapped, the speediest and easiest death which can be inflicted is by sinking the cage in water.

Here Mr. Slenderwit, critic in ordinary to an established journal, wherein he is licensed to sink, burn and destroy any book in which his publisher has not a particular interest, turns down the corners of his mouth in contemptuous admiration, and calling to mind the anecdote of Grainger's invocation repeats in a tone of the softest self-complacence “Now Muse, let's sing of Rats!” And Mr. Slapdash who holds a similar appointment in a rival periodical slaps his thigh in exultation upon finding so good an opportunity for a stroke at the anonymous author. But let the one simper in accompaniment to the other's snarl. I shall say out my say in disregard of both. Aye Gentlemen,

For if a Humble Bee should kill a Whale With the butt end of the Antarctic pole, Tis nothing to the mark at which we aim.