They are known to be inflicted, and yet this is a trifle not worth an effort toward innovation on inveterate custom, on the part of the influential classes; who may be far more worthily intent on a change in the fashion of a dress, or possibly some new refinement in the cookery of the dead bodies of the victims. Or the _living_ bodies; as we are told that the most delicious preparation of an eel for exquisite palates is to thrust the fish alive into the fire: while lobsters are put into water _gradually_ heated to boiling. The latter, indeed, is an old practice, like that of _crimping_ another fish. Such things are allowed or required to be done by persons pretending to the highest refinement. It is a matter far below legislative attention; while the powers of definition are exhausted under the stupendous accumulation of regulations and interdictions for the good order of society. So hardened may the moral sense of a community be by universal and continual custom, that we are perfectly aware these very remarks will provoke the ridicule of many persons, including, it is possible enough, some who may think it quite consistent to be ostentatiously talking at the very same time of Christian charity and benevolent zeal. [Footnote: This was actually done in a religious periodical publication.] Nor will that ridicule be repressed by the notoriety of the fact, that the manner of the practice referred to steels and depraves, to a dreadful degree, a vast number of human beings immediately employed about it; and, as a spectacle, powerfully contributes to confirm, in a greater number, exactly that which it is, by eminence, the object of moral tuition to counteract--men's disposition to make-light of all suffering but their own. This one thing, this not caring for what may be endured by other beings made liable to suffering, is the very essence of the depravity which is so fatal to our race in their social constitution. This selfish hardness is moral plague enough even in an inactive state, as a mere carelessness what other beings may suffer; but there lurks in it a malignity which is easily stimulated to delight in seeing or causing their suffering. And yet, we repeat it, a civilized and Christian nation feels not the slightest self-displacency for its allowing a certain unhappy but necessary part in the economy of the world to be executed, (by preference to a harmless method,) in a manner which probably does as much to corroborate in the vulgar class this essential principle of depravity, as all the expedients of melioration yet applied are doing to expel it.