CRUELTY. As between husband and wife. Those acts which affect the life, the health, or even the comfort, of the party ag grieved, and give a reasonable apprehension of bodily hurt, are called cruelty. What merely wounds the feelings is seldom ad mitted to be cruelty, unless the act be accom panied with bodily injury, either actual or menaced. Mere austerity of temper, petu lance of manners, rudeness of language, a want of civil attention and accommodation, even occasional sallies of passion, will not amount to legal cruelty, 17 Conn. 189; a for tiori., the denial of little indulgences and par ticular accommodations, which the delicacy of the world is apt to number among its necessaries, is not cruelty. The negative descriptions of cruelty are perhaps the best, under the infinite variety of cases that may occur, by showing what is not cruelty. 1 Hagg. Eccl. 35 ; 4 Eccl. 238, 311, 312; 1 Hagg. Cons. 37, 458 ; 154; 1 Phil]. Eccl. 111, 132; 1 M'Cord, Ch. So. C. 205; 2 J. J. Marsh. Ky. 324; 2 Chitty, Pract. 461, 489; Poynton, Marr. & D. c. 15, p. 208; Shelford, Marr. & D. 425 ; 8 N. H. 307; 3 Mass. 321; 4 id. 487.
2. Cruelty towards weak and helpless per sons takes place where a party bound to pro vide for and protect them either abuses them by whipping them unnecessarily, or by neg lecting to provide for them those necessaries which their helpless condition requires. Ex
posing a person of tender years, under a party's care, to the inclemency of the wea ther, 2 Campb. 650; keeping such a child, unable to provide for himself, without ade quate food, 1 Leach, Cr. Cas. 137; Russ. (t R. 20; or an overseer neglecting to provide food and medical care to a pauper having urgent and immediate occasion for them, Russ. & R. 46, 47, 48, are examples of this species of cruelty.
By the civil code of Louisiana, art. 192, it is enacted that, when the master shall be convicted of cruel treatment of his slave, the judge may pronounce, besides the penalty established for such cases, that the slave shall be sold at public auction, in order to place him out of the reach of the power which his master has abused.
3. Cruelty to animals is an indictable of fence. A defendant was convicted of a mis demeanor for tying the tongue of a calf so near the root as to prevent its sucking, in order to sell the cow at a greater price, by giving to her udder the appearance of being full of milk while affording the calf all he needed. 6 Rog. N. Y. 62. A man may be indicted for cruelly beating his horse. 3 Rog. N. Y. 191. See 1 Bishop, Crim. Law, 439.