A Letter to the Right Hon. William Wyndham on his late opposition to the bill to prevent Bull-Baiting: By an Old Member of Parliament

1800. Second Edition. London: printed by W. Stratford, sold Cadell and Davies, [1800]. (4), 47 pp. Neatly bound in later marbled boards, cloth spine lettered in gilt. A fine copy.

Surprisingly rare pamphlet (no first edition located), censorious of the enjoyment afforded the lower classes by the spectacle of torture inflicted on dumb animals, in this case the unspeakable cruelties of bull-baiting. The attempt to outlaw bull-baiting figured significantly in the contest in England between reform and reaction at the time of the French Revolution. Advocated by Wilberforce and others, the bill was defeated by conservative ideologies, such as Edmund Burke and acolyte, William Wyndham, who foresaw in the abolition of such brutality the erosion of the traditions which supposedly bound the lower classes to the existing social order. Put simply, better to torture a poor animal than guillotine an aristocrat-a familiar dynamic in class society then and now.