The Daily clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1866-1888, 1884-03-09
6. Stock of all kinds would be great

6. Stock of all kinds would be great
ly improved. Even in the great stock
raising regions of Kentucky, Texas anC
other States, stock of all kinds arr
usually kept in fenced pastures, or il
herds. We might have less stock but
we would have better. The promiscuous
mingling of herds and the general lack
of shelter curing winter are sources u
great deterioration and loss. Even the
law forbidding hogs from running at
large in several counties in this State
for the last few years, has caused mani
fest improvement in the number and
quality of hogs in those counties. Jer-
sey and other imported breeds of cattle
cinnot be successfully kept under our
present system.
7. Without assigning further reasons
Il fundamental and all-embracing reason
for a stock-law is, that right and justice
require that e0ery man should Keep his stock
on his own land. A deed to land EN-
braces all its products and appurte-
nances. Growing crops are never ag-
gressors. Rowing, jumping and devour-
ing stock ought to be fenced or controll-
ed by their owners. Only on the public
domain may stock Craze at liberty.
To these reasons there are some APP
parent sbjections:
/. Such a law would deprive the poor
man Of pasturage. Not at all. His
stock may Craze upon his landlords pas
ture then, as they now do upon his
neighbor's commons. (How can land be
common that is owned by individuals? p |
The poor mans lack of pasture stands |
upon the same reason with his lack of a
house to live in, or animals to pillow, or a
full corn-crib, or full purse. Society
is under no more obligation to furnish
the poor man pasture for his stock than
to furnish him anything else he needs.
The only real objection to these views
is the difficulty of abandoning practi-
cal error. Having been long accustomed
to treat all unfenced land as public
property. and to compel every man, at
immense cost, to fence against his neigh
bOr's stock, we have become used to the
wrong, and it would be by no means
easy for us now to adopt the practice of
justice and right in this matter. Both
reason and scripture, however, plainly
teach that it is every mans duty to re-
strain the animals he owns from injur-
ing others. Right principles property
applied ARRAYS produce good results. So {
soon as we become practically adjusted
to the application of such law, the
whole country, landlords and tenants,
will rejoice in its results, being surprised
to think they were so slow to seek them. ,
Fence building is the Herculean task
of American labor 1t is the ever re-
turning stone of Lisyphus, rolled to Il . /
top, only to roll down, that
it may be rolled up again. Fences are
forever being being built and rebuilt, to
tumble down or be washed away. Most
legislation be which shall permanently
deliver the planting world from the enor-
nous expense and intolerable labor of
fence building, except for enclosing stock
Such law, too, would be decidedly in the
interest of peace. Many a quarrel be- I
tween neighbors arises about misc hievous ?
stock. Hard thoughts, personal conflicts, =
md even family feuds of many years o
duration have not unfrequently owed e
heir origin to the essential injustice of i,
one man to fence against an il
,ther's stock. Once, in the days of old p
t is said that devils were permitted to 5,
90 from men into swine; in our times a.
hey sometimes seem to pass the other n
way, and cause the owners of the swine al
o say and do the hardest sort of things. M
t we are not prepared for such a law
low, let us be looking toward it, for to
t we must come ere long.
w. l.. G. HUNNICUT.