Besides, if bull-baiting was given up, the characteristic of our British dogs, so classically celebrated in the Augustan age of literature, would be totally lost. Claudian says: ‘Magnaque taurorum fracturæ colla Britannæ.’ Symmachus mentions seven Irish bull-dogs: ‘Septem Scottici canes,’ as then first produced in the circus at Rome, to the great admiration of the people.’” General Gascoyne considered it an amusement which the lower orders were entitled to; and it was “with regret he observed a disposition in many of the members to deprive the poor of their recreations, and force them to pass their time in chaunting at conventicles.” Then the gentle William Wilberforce rose, and rebuked the former speakers, telling them that he thought the subject had been treated with too much levity. “The evidence against the practice was derived from respectable magistrates. From such evidence he had derived a variety of facts, which were too horrid to detail to the House. A bull—that honest, harmless, useful animal—was forcibly tied to a stake, and a number of bull-dogs set upon him. If he was not sufficiently roused by the pain of their attacks, the most barbarous expedients were hit upon to awake in him that fury which was necessary to the amusement of the inhuman spectators. One instance of the latter kind he would state. A bull had been bought for the sole purpose of being baited; but, upon being fixed to the stake, he was found of so mild a nature that all the attacks of the dogs were insufficient to excite him to the requisite degree of fury; upon which those who bought him refused to pay the price to the original owner, unless he could be made to serve their purposes: the owner, after numberless expedients, at last sawed off his horns, and poured into them a poignant sort of liquid, that quickly excited the animal to the wished-for degree of fury. When bulls were bought merely for the purpose of being baited, the people who bought them wished to have as much diversion (if diversion, such cruelty could be called) as possible, for their money. The consequence was that every art, even fire, had been employed to rouse the exhausted animal to fresh exertions, and there were instances where he had expired in protracted agonies amidst the flames. It had been said, that it would be wrong to deprive the lower orders of their amusements, of the only cordial drop of life which supported them under their complicated burthens. Wretched, indeed, must be the condition of the common people of England, if their whole happiness consisted in the practice of such barbarity!” Sheridan joined Wilberforce; but the Bill was thrown out by 64 to 51; and the practice of Bull-baiting was only declared illegal in 1835, when it was included in the Act against Cruelty to Animals, 5th and 6th William IV., cap. 59.