Animals' rights considered in relation to social progress : with a bibliographical appendix

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ANIMALS' RIGHTS

CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO
SOCIAL PROGRESS

BY

HEr^RY S. SALT

Author of " The Life of David Thoreau,^'' qt'c.

LONDON

GEORGE BELL AND SONS

AND NEW YORK
1893

ANIMALS' RIGHTS.

" I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human
soul look out upon me.

" I saw where it was born deep down under feathers
and fur, or condemned for awhile to roam four-footed
among the brambles. I caught the clinging mute
glance of the prisoner, and swore that I would be
faithful.

" Thee my brother and sister I see and mistake not.
Do not be afraid. DweUing thus for a while, fulfilling
thy appointed time — thou too shalt come to thyself at
last.

"Thy half- warm horns and long tongue lapping
round my wrist do not conceal thy humanity anymore
than the learned talk of the pedant conceals his — for
all thou art dumb we have words and plenty between us.

" Come nigh, little bird, with your half-stretched
quivering wings — within you I behold choirs of angels,
and the Lord himself in vista."

Towards Democracy.

ANIMALS' RIGHTS

CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO SOCIAL
PROGRESS.

WITH A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX.

BY

HENRY S. SALT,

AUTHOR OF "the LIFE OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU.

LONDON :

GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK ST. , COVENT GARDEN,

AND NEW YORK.

1892.

CHISWICK PRESS :— C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.

PREFATORY NOTE.

The object of the following essay is to set
the principle of animals' rights on a consistent
and intelligible footing, to show that this prin-
ciple underlies the various efforts of humani-
tarian reformers, and to make a clearance of
the comfortable fallacies which the apologists
of the present system have industriously accu-
mulated. While not hesitating to speak
strongly when occasion demanded, I have
tried to avoid the tone of irrelevant recrimina-
tion so common in these controversies, and
thus to give more unmistakable emphasis to
the vital points at issue. We have to decide,
not whether the practice of fox-hunting, for
example, is more, or less, cruel than vivisec-
tion, but whether all practices which inflict
unnecessary pain on sentient beings are not
incompatible with the higher instincts of
humanity.

I am aware that many of my contentions

vi Prefatory Note.

will appear very ridiculous to those who view
the subject from a contrary standpoint, and
regard the lower animals as created solely for
the pleasure and advantage of man ; on the
other hand, I have myself derived an unfailing
fund of amusement from a rather extensive
study of our adversaries' reasoning. It is a
conflict of opinion, wherein time alone can
adjudicate ; but already there are not a few
signs that the laugh will rest ultimately with
the humanitarians.

My thanks are due to several friends who
have helped me in the preparation of this
book ; I may mention Mr. Ernest Bell, Mr.
Kenneth Romanes, and Mr. W. E. A. Axon.
My many obligations to previous writers are
acknowledged in the footnotes and appen-
dices.

H. S. S.

September^ 1892.

CONTENTS.

Chapter I. The Principle of Animals' Rights.

The general doctrine of rights ; Herbert Spencer's
definition. Early advocates of animals' rights ;
" Martin's Act," 1822. Need of an intelligible prin-
ciple. Two main causes of the denial of animals'
rights; (i) The "religious" notion that animals
have no souls, (2) the Cartesian theory that animals
have no consciousness. The individuality of animals.
Opinions of Schopenhauer, Darwin, etc. The
question of nomenclature ; objectionable use of such
terms as "brute-beast," etc. The progressiveness
of humanitarian feeling ; analogous instance of negro-
slavery. Difficulties and objections ; arguments
drawn from " the struggle of life." Animals' rights
not antagonistic to human rights. Summary of the
principle pp. 1-29

Chapter II. The Case of Domestic Anpmals.

Special claims of the domestic animals ; services per-
formed by them ; human obligations in return.
Opinions of Humphry Primatt and John Lawrence.
Common disregard of rights in the case of horses,
cattle, sheep, etc. Castration of animals. Treat-

viii Contents,

ment of dogs and cats. Condition of the household
"pet" compared with that of the "beast of burden."

pp. 30-44

Chapter III. The Case of Wild Animals.

Wild animals have rights, though not yet recognized
in law. The influence of property. Man not justi-
fied in injuring any harmless animal. The condition
of animals in menageries ; the fallacy that " they
gain by it." Caged birds. A right relationship
must be based on sympathy not power pp. 45-53

Chapter IV. The Slaughter of Animals
FOR Food.

Important bearing of the food question on the con-
sideration of animals' rights. The assumption that
flesh-food is necessary ; contradictory statements of
flesh-eaters. Experience proves that man is not
compelled to kill animals for food. Cruelties in-
separable from slaughtering ; feeling of repugnance
thereby aroused. The logic of' these facts. In-
genious attempts at evasion : "Animals would other-
wise not exist;" "scriptural permission." The
coming success of food-reform . . pp. 54-66

Chapter V. Sport, or Amateur Butchery.

Sport the most wanton of all violations of animals'
rights. Childish fallacies of sportsmen. Tame
stag hunting ; rabbit-coursing ; cruel treatment of
" vermin ; " steel traps. The testimony of an expert
on cover-shooting .... pp. 67-78

Contents. ix

Chapter VI. Murderous Millinery.

The fur and feather traffic. In what sense it is " neces-
sary ; " the use of leather. Fashionable demand for
furs causes whole provinces to be ransacked. The
wearing of feathers in bonnets ; heartless massacre
of birds. Due to ignorance and thoughtlessness.

pp. 79-89

Chapter VII. Experimental Torture.

The analytical methods of scientists and naturalists.
Vivisection the logical outcome of this mood. The
horrors of vivisection. Its alleged utility. Moral
considerations involved ; nothing that is inhuman
can be in accord with true science. Experiments
on animals as compared with experiments on men.
The plea that vivisection is "no worse" than other
cruelties. The exact significance of vivisection in
the question of animals' rights . . pp. 90-103

Chapter VIII. Lines of Reform.

The lesson of the foregoing instances of cruelty and
injustice ; the only solution of the problem is to
recognize animals' rights. No "sentimentality,"
where difficulties are fairly faced. The future path
of humanitarianism. Human interests involved in
animals' rights ; extension of the idea of " humanity "
both in western thought and oriental tradition. The
movement essentially a democratic one ; the eman-
cipation of man will bring with it the emancipation
of animals. Practical steps toward securing the
rights of animals : (i) Education. Useless to preach

X Contents,

humanity to children only ; need of an intellectual
and literary crusade. The laugh to be turned against
the real sentimentalists, our opponents. (2) Legisla-
tion. Laisser-faire objections refuted. Cases where
immediate action is desirable. Conclusion.

pp. 104-131

Bibliographical Appendix . . pp. 133-162

ANIMALS' RIGHTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE PRINCIPLE OF ANIMALS' RIGHTS.

Have the lower animals " rights ? " Un-
doubtedly— if men have. That is the point I
wish to make evident in this opening chapter.
But have men rights ? Let it be stated at the
outset that I have no intention of discussing
the abstract theory of natural rights, which,
at the present time, is looked upon with sus-
picion and disfavour by many social reformers,
since it has not unfrequently been made to
cover the most extravagant and contradictory
assertions. But though its phraseology is
confessedly vague and perilous, there is never-
theless a solid truth underlying it — a truth
which has always been clearly apprehended
by the moral faculty, however difficult it may
be to establish it on an unassailable logical

B

Animals Rio-hts

<^

basis. If men have not "rights" — well, they
have an unmistakable intimation of something
very similar ; a sense of justice which marks
the boundary-line where acquiescence ceases
and resistance begins ; a demand for freedom
to live their own life, subject to the necessity
of respecting the equal freedom of other
people.

Such is the doctrine of rights as formulated
by Herbert Spencer. " Every man," he says,
" is free to do that which he wills, provided he
infringes not the equal liberty of any other
man." And again, " Whoever admits that
each man must have a certain restricted free-
dom, asserts that it is 7^zght he should have
this restricted freedom. . . . And hence the
several particular freedoms deducible may fitly
be called, as they commonly are called, his
rights!' ^

The fitness of this nomenclature is disputed,
but the existence of some real principle of the
kind can hardly be called in question ; so that
the controversy concerning " rights " is little
else than an academic battle over words, which
leads to no practical conclusion. I shall as-
sume, therefore, that men are possessed of
" rights," in the sense of Herbert Spencer's
^ "Justice," pp. 46, 62.

The Principle of Animals Rights. 3

definition ; and if any of my readers object to
this qualified use of the term, I can only say
that I shall be perfectly willing to change the
word as soon as a more appropriate one is
forthcoming. The immediate question that
claims our attention is this — if men have
rights, have animals their rights also ?

From the earliest times there have been
thinkers who, directly or indirectly, answered
this question with an affirmative. The Bud-
dhist and Pythagorean canons, dominated per-
haps by the creed of reincarnation, included
the maxim " not to kill or injure any innocent
animal." The humanitarian philosophers of
the Roman empire, among whom Seneca and
Plutarch and Porphyry were the most con-
spicuous, took still higher ground in preaching
humanity on the broadest principle of uni-
versal benevolence. " Since justice is due to
rational beings," wrote Porphyry, " how is it
possible to evade the admission that we are
bound also to act justly towards the races
below us ? "

It is a lamentable fact that during the
churchdom of the middle ages, from the
fourth century to the sixteenth, from the time
of Porphyry to the time of Montaigne, little
or no attention was paid to the question of

4 Animals Rights.

the rights and wrongs of the lower races.
Then, with the Reformation and the revival
of learning, came a revival also of humani-
tarian feeling, as may be seen in many pas-
sages of Erasmus and More, Shakespeare and
Bacon ; but it was not until the eighteenth
century, the age of enlightenment and " sen-
sibility," of which Voltaire and Rousseau
were the spokesmen, that the rights of ani-
mals obtained more deliberate recognition.
From the great Revolution of 1789 dates the
period when the world-wide spirit of humani-
tarianism, which had hitherto been felt by but
one man in a million — the thesis of the philo-
sopher or the vision of the poet? — began to
disclose itself, gradually and dimly at first, as
an essential feature of democracy.

A great and far-reaching effect was pro-
duced in England at this time by the publica-
tion of such revolutionary works as Paine's
" Rights of Man," and Mary Wollstonecraft's
" Vindication of the Rights of Women ; " and
looking back now, after the lapse of a hundred
years, we can see that a still wider extension
of the theory of rights was thenceforth in-
evitable. In fact, such a claim was antici-
pated— if only in bitter jest — by a contempo-
rary writer, who furnishes us with a notable

The Prijiciplc of Animals Rights. 5

instance of how the mockery of one generation
may become the reality of the next. There
was pubHshed anonymously in 1792 a little
volume entitled " A Vindication of the Rights
of Brutes," ^ a rcductio ad absitrdiun of Mary
Wollstonecraft's essay, written, as the author
informs us, " to evince by demonstrative argu-
ments the perfect equalit}- of what is called
the irrational species to the human." The
further opinion is expressed that " after those
wonderful productions of Mr. Paine and Mrs.
Wollstonecraft, such a theory as the present
seems to be necessary." It ivas necessary ;
and a very short term of years sufficed to
bring it into effect ; indeed, the theory had
already been put forward by several English
pioneers of nineteenth - century humanita-
rianism.

To Jeremy Bentham, in particular, belongs
the high honour of first asserting the rights of
animals with authority and persistence. " The
legislator," he wrote, " ought to interdict
everything which may serve to lead to cruelty.
The barbarous spectacles of gladiators no
doubt contributed to give the Romans that
ferocity which they displayed in their civil
wars. A people accustomed to despise human
^ Attributed to Thomas Taylor, the Platonist.

Animals Riohts.

ib

life in their games could not be expected to
respect it amid the fury of their passions.
It is proper for the same reason to forbid
every kind of cruelty towards animals, whether
by way of amusement, or to gratify gluttony.
Cock-fights, bull-baiting, hunting hares and
foxes, fishing, and other amusements of the
same kind, necessarily suppose either the ab-
sence of reflection or a fund of inhumanity,
since they produce the most acute sufferings
to sensible beings, and the most painful and
lingering death of which we can form any
idea. Why should the law refuse its protec-
tion to any sensitive being? The time will
come when humanity will extend its mantle
over everything which breathes. We have
begun by attending to the condition of slaves ;
we shall finish by softening that of all the
animals which assist our labours or supply
our wants." ^

So, too, wrote one of Bentham's contempo-
raries : " The grand source of the unmerited
and superfluous misery of beasts exists in a
defect in the constitution of all communities.
No human government, I believe, has ever re-
cognized WiQJus animalmm, which ought surely
to form a part of the jurisprudence of every
^ " Principles of Penal Law," chap. xvi.

The Principle of Animals Rights. 7

system founded on the principles of justice
and humanity." ^ A large number of later
moralists have followed on the same lines,
with the result that the rights of animals have
already, to a certain limited extent, been esta-
blished both in private usage and by legal
enactment.

It is interesting to note the exact commence-
ment of this new principle in law. When
Lord Erskine, speaking in the House of Lords
in 181 1, advocated the cause of justice to the
lower animals, he was greeted with loud cries
of insult and derision. But eleven years later
the efforts of the despised humanitarians, and
especially of Richard Martin, of Galway, were
rewarded by their first success. The passing
of the Ill-treatment of Cattle Bill, commonly
known as "Martin's Act," in June. 1822, is a
memorable date in the history of humane
legislation, less on account of the positive pro-
tection afforded by it, for it applied only to
cattle and " beasts of burden," than for the in-
valuable precedent which it created. From
1822 onward, the principle of \h2X jus anijiia-
liuin for which Bentham had pleaded, was re-

^ John Lawrence, " Philosophical Treatise on the
Moral Duties of Man towards the Brute Creation,"
1796.

8 Animals Rights,

cognized, however partially and tentatively at
first, by English law, and the animals included
in the Act ceased to be the mere property of
their owners ; moreover the Act has been
several times supplemented and extended
during the past half century.^ It is scarcely
possible, in the face of this legislation, to main-
tain that " rights " are a privilege with which
none but human beings can be invested ; for
if some animals are already included within
the pale of protection, why should not more
and more be so included in the future ?

For the present, however, what is most
urgently needed is some comprehensive and
intelligible principle, which shall indicate, in a
more consistent manner, the true lines of man's
moral relation towards the lower animals.
And here, it must be admitted, our position is
still far from satisfactory ; for though certain
very important concessions have been made,
as we have seen, to the demand for \\v^ jus
aniinaliuin, they have been made for the most
part in a grudging, unwilling spirit, and rather
in the interests oi p7'Ope7'ty 'C^'d.n oi principle ;
while even the leading advocates of animals*

' Viz. : in 1833, 1835, 1849, 1854, 1876, 1884. We
shall have occasion, in subsequent chapters, to refer
to some of these enactments.

The Principle of Animals Rights, g

rights seem to have shrunk from basing their
claim on the only argument which can ulti-
mately be held to be a really sufficient one —
the assertion that animals, as well as men,
though, of course, to a far less extent than
men, are possessed of a distinctive individuality,
and, therefore, are in justice entitled to live their
lives with a due measure of that " restricted
freedom " to which Herbert Spencer alludes.
It is of little use to claim " rights " for animals
in a vague general way, if with the same breath
we explicitly show our determination to sub-
ordinate those rights to anything and every-
thing that can be construed into a human
" want ; " nor will it ever be possible to obtain
full justice for the lower races so long as we
continue to regard them as beings of a wholly
different order, and to ignore the significance
of their numberless points of kinship with
mankind.

For example, it has been said by a well-
known writer on the subject of humanity to
animals ^ that " the life of a brute, having no
moral purpose,can best be understood ethically
as representing the sum of its pleasures ; and
the obligation, therefore, of producing the

1 "Fraser," November, 1S63; "The Rights of Man
and the Claims of Brutes."

lo Animals RioJits.

<b

pleasures of sentient creatures must be reduced,
in their case, to the abstinence from unneces-
sary destruction of Hfe." Now, with respect to
this statement, I must say that the notion of
the Hfe of an animal having "no moral pur-
pose," belongs to a class of ideas which cannot
possibly be accepted by the advanced humani-
tarian thought of the present day — it is a purely
arbitrary assumption, at variance with our best
instincts, at variance with our best science,
and absolutely fatal (if the subject be clearly
thought out) to any full realization of animals'
rights. If we are ever going to do justice to
the lower races, we must get rid of the anti-
quated notion of a "great gulf" fixed between
them and mankind, and must recognize the
common bond of humanity that unites all
living beings in one universal brotherhood.

As far as any excuses can be alleged, in ex-
planation of the insensibility or inhumanity
of the western nations in their treatment of
animals, these excuses may be mostly traced
back to one or the other of two theoretical
contentions, wholly different in origin, yet
alike in this — that both postulate an absolute
difference of nature between men and the
lower kinds.

The first is the so-called " religious " notion,

The Principle of Animals Rights. 1 1

which awards immortality to man, but to man
alone, thereby furnishing" (especially in Catholic
countries) a quibbling justification for acts of
cruelty to animals, on the plea that they " have
no souls." " It should seem," says a modern
writer,^ " as if the primitive Christians, by lay-
ing so much stress upon a future life, in contra-
distinction to tJiis life, and placing the lower
creatures out of the pale of hope, placed them
at the same time out of the pale of sympathy,
and thus laid the foundation for this utter dis-
regard of animals in the light of our fellow-
creatures."

I am aware that a quite contrary argument
has, in a few isolated instances, been founded
on the belief that animals have "no souls."
Humphry Primatt, for example, says that
" cruelty to a brute is an injury irreparable,"
because there is no future life to be a com-
pensation for present afflictions ; and there is
an amusing story, told by Lecky in his
" History of European Morals," of a certain
humanely-minded Cardinal, who used to allow
vermin to bite him without hindrance, on the
ground that " we shall have heaven to reward
us for our sufferings, but these poor creatures

^ Mrs. Jameson, " Book of Thoughts, Memories, and
Fancies," 1854.

T2 Animals RioJits

s

have nothing but the enjoyment of this present
hfe." But this is a rare view of the question
which need not, I think, be taken into very
serious account ; for, on the whole, the denial
of immortality to animals (unless, of course,
it be also denied to men) tends strongly to
lessen their chance of being justly and con-
siderately treated. Among the many humane
movements of the present age, none is more
significant than the growing inclination, notice-
able both in scientific circles and in religious,
to believe that mankind and the lower animals
have the same destiny before them, whether
that destiny be for immortality or for annihila-
tion/

The second and not less fruitful sgurce of
modern inhumanity is to be found in the
" Cartesian " doctrine — the theory of Des-
cartes and his followers — that the low^er
animals are devoid of consciousness and
feeling ; a theory which carried the " reli-
gious " notion a step further, and deprived the

^ See the article on "Animal Immortality," "The
Nineteenth Century," Jan., 1891, by Norman Pearson.
The upshot of his argument is, that " if we accept the
immortaHty of the human soul, and a/so accept its
evolutional origin, we cannot deny the survival, in
some form or other, of animal minds,"

The Principle of Animals Rights. 13

animals not only of their claim to a life here-
after, but of anything that could, without
mockery, be called a life in the present, since
mere " animated machines," as they were thus
affirmed to be, could in no real sense be said
to live at all ! Well might Voltaire turn his
humane ridicule against this most monstrous
contention, and suggest, with scathing irony,
that God " had given the animals the organs
of feeling, to the end that they might notfeeW"
" The theory of animal automatism," says one
of the leading scientists of the present day,^
" which is usually attributed to Descartes, can
never be accepted by common sense." Yet it
is to be feared that it has done much, in its
time, to harden " scientific " sense against the
just complaints of the victims of human arro-
gance and oppression.

Let me here quote a most impressive pas-
sage from Schopenhauer. " The unpardon-
able forgetfulness in which the lower animals
have hitherto been left by the moralists of

^ G. J. Romanes, "Animal Intelligence." Prof.
Huxley's remarks, in " Science and Culture," give a
partial support to Descartes' theory, but do not bear
on the moral question of rights. For, though he con-
cludes that animals are probably " sensitive automata,"
he classes men in the same category.

14 Ajwjiais Rights.

Europe is well known. It is pretended that
the beasts have no rights. They persuade
themselves that our conduct in regard to them
has nothing to do with morals, or (to speak
the language of their morality) that we have
no duties towards animals : a doctrine revolting,
gross, and barbarous, peculiar to the west, and
having its root in Judaism. In philosophy,
however, it is made to rest upon a hypothesis,
admitted, in despite of evidence itself, of an
absolute difference between man and beast.
It is Descartes who has proclaimed it in the
clearest and most decisive manner ; and in
fact it was a necessary consequence of his
errors. The Cartesian-Leibnitzian-Wolfian
philosophy, with the assistance of entirely
abstract notions, had built up the ' rational
psychology,' and constructed an immortal
aniuia rationalis : but, visibly, the world of
beasts, with its very natural claims, stood up
against this exclusive monopoly — this brevet
of immortality decreed to man alone — and
silently Nature did what she always does in
such cases — she protested. Our philosophers,
feeling their scientific conscience quite dis-
turbed, were forced to attempt to consolidate
their ' rational psychology ' by the aid of
empiricism. They therefore set themselves to

The Principle of Animals Rights. 1 5

work to hollow out between man and beast an
enormous abyss, of an immeasurable width ;
by this they wish to prove to us, in contempt
of evidence, an impassable difference."^

The fallacious idea that the lives of animals
have " no moral purpose " is at root connected
with these religious and philosophical preten-
sions which Schopenhauer so powerfully con-
demns. To live one's own life — to realize
one's true self — is the highest moral purpose
of man and animal alike ; and that animals
possess their due measure of this sense of
individuality is scarcely open to doubt. " We
have seen," says Darwin^ " that the senses and
intuitions, the various emotions and faculties,
such as love, memory, attention, curiosity,
imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts,
may be found in an incipient, or even some-
times in a well-developed condition, in the
lower animals^iL^ Not less emphatic is the
testimony of the Rev. J. G. Wood, who,
speaking from a great experience, gives it as
his opinion that " the manner in which we
ignore individuality in the lower animals is

^ Schopenhauer's " Foundation of MoraHty." I
quote the passage as translated in Mr. Howard
Williams's " Ethics of Diet."

^ " Descent of Man," chap. ill.

1 6 Animals Rights,

simply astounding." He claims for them a
future life, because he is " quite sure that most
of the cruelties which are perpetrated on the
animals arc due to the habit of considering
them as mdre machines without susceptibili-
ties, without reason, and without the capacity
of a future." ^

This, then, is the position of those who
assert that animals, like men, are necessarily
possessed of certain limited rights, which can-
not be withheld from them as they are now
withheld without tyranny and injustice. They
have individuality, character, reason ; and to
have those qualities is to have the right to
exercise them, in so far as surrounding cir-
cumstances permit. " Freedom of choice and
act," says Ouida, " is the first condition of
animal as of human happiness. How many
animals in a million have even relative free-
dom in any moment of their lives ? No choice
is ever permitted to them ; and all their most
natural instincts are denied or made subject to
authority." ^ Yet no human being is justified
in regarding any animal whatsoever as a
meaningless automaton, to be worked, or tor-
tured, or eaten, as the case may be, for the

^ " Man and Beast, here and hereafter," 1874,
^ "Fortnightly Review," April, 1892.

The Principle of Animals Rights. 17

mere object of satisfying the wants or whims
of mankind. Together with the destinies and
duties that are laid on them and fulfilled by
them, animals have also the right to be treated
with gentleness and consideration, and the man
who does not so treat them, however great his
learning or influence may be, is, in that respect,
an ignorant and foolish man, devoid of the
highest and noblest culture of which the
human mind is capable.

Something must here be said on the impor-
tant subject of nomenclature. It is to be
feared that the ill-treatment of animals is
largely due — or at any rate the difficulty of
amending that treatment is largely increased
— by the common use of such terms as "brute-
beast," " live - stock," etc., which implicitly
deny to the lower races that intelligent indi-
viduality which is most undoubtedly possessed
by them. It was long ago remarked by Ben-
tham, in his " Introduction to Principles of
Morals and Legislation," that, whereas human
beings are styled persons^ "other animals, on
account of their interests having been neg-
lected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists,
stand degraded into the class of things ; " and
Schopenhauer also has commented on the
mischievous absurdity of the idiom which

C

1 8 Animals Rt'ckts,

<b

applies the neuter pronoun " it " to such highly
organized primates as the dog and the ape.

A word of protest is needed also against
such an expression as " dumb animals," which,
though often cited as " an immense exhorta-
tion to pity," ^ has in reality a tendency to
influence ordinary people in quite the contrary
direction, inasmuch as it fosters the idea of an
impassable barrier between mankind and their
dependents. It is convenient to us men to be
deaf to the entreaties of the victims of our
injustice ; and, by a sort of grim irony, we
therefore assume that it is they who are afflicted
by some organic incapacity — they are " dumb
animals," forsooth ! although a moment's con-
sideration must prove that they have innu-
merable ways, often quite human in variety
and suggestiveness, of uttering their thoughts
and emotions.^ Even the term "animals,"

^ In Sir A. Helps's "Animals and their Masters."
^ Let those who think that men are likely to treat
animals with more humanity on account of their dumb-
ness ponder the case of the fish, as exemplified in the
following whimsically suggestive passage of Leigh
Hunt's '' Imaginary Conversations of Pope and Swift."
" The Dean once asked a scrub who was fishing, if he
had ever caught a fish called the Scream. The man
protested that he had never heard of such a fish.
' What ! ' says the Dean, ' you an angler, and never

The Principle 0/ Animals Rights. 19

as applied to the lower races, is incorrect, and
not wholly unobjectionable, since it ignores
the fact that man is an animal no less than
they. My only excuse for using it in this
volume is that there is absolutely no other
brief term available.

So anomalous is the attitude of man towards
the lower animals, that it is no marvel if many
humane thinkers have wellnigh despaired over
this question. " The whole subject of the brute
creation," wrote Dr. Arnold, " is to me one of
such painful mystery, that I dare not approach
it ; " and this (to put the most charitable in-
terpretation on their silence) appears to be
the position of the majority of moralists and
teachers at the present time. Yet there is
urgent need of some key to the solution of
the problem ; and in ho other way can this
key be found than by the full inclusion of the
lower races within the pale of human sym-
pathy. All the promptings of our best and

heard of the fish that gives a shriek when coming out
of the water ? 'Tis the only fish that has a voice, and
a sad, dismal sound it is.' The man asked who could
be so barbarous as to angle for a creature that shrieked.
' That,' said the Dean, ' is another matter ; but what
do you think of fellows that I have seen, whose only
reason for hooking and tearing all the fish they can
get at, is that they do not scream ? "

20 Animals Rio-Jits.

s

surest instincts point us in this direction. "It
is abundantly evident," says Lecky,^ "both
from history and from present experience,
that the instinctive shock, or natural feelings
of disgust, caused by the sight of the suffer-
ings of men, is not generically different from
that which is caused by the sight of the suffer-
ing of animals."

If this be so — and the admission is a momen-
tous one — can it be seriously contended that
the same humanitarian tendency which has
already emancipated the slave, will not ulti-
mately benefit the lower races also? Here,
again, the historian of " European Morals "
has a significant remark : " At one time," he
says, " the benevolent affections embrace
merely the family, soon the circle expanding
includes first a class, then a nation, then a
coalition of nations, then all humanity ; and
finally its influence is felt in the dealings of
man with the animal world. In each of these
cases a standard is formed, different from that
of the preceding stage, but in each case the
same tendency is recognized as virtue." ^

But, it may be argued, vague sympathy with
the lower animals is one thing, and a definite

^ " History of European Morals."
^ IdM. i, loi.

The Principle of Animals Rights. 2 i

recognition of their " rights " is another ; what
reason is there to suppose that we shall ad-
vance from the former phase to the latter?
Just this ; that every great liberating move-
ment has proceeded exactly on these lines.
Oppression and cruelty are invariably founded
on a lack of imaginative sympathy ; the tyrant
or tormentor can have no true sense of kinship
with .the victim of his injustice. When once
the sense of affinity is awakened, the knell of
tyranny is sounded, and the ultimate conces-
sion of " rights " is simply a matter of time.
The present condition of the more highly or-
ganized domestic animals is in many ways
very analogous to that of the negro slaves of
a hundred years ago : look back, and you will
find in their case precisely the same exclusion
from the common pale of humanity ; the same
hypocritical fallacies, to justify that exclusion ;
and, as a consequence, the same deliberate
stubborn denial of their social " rights." Look
back — for it is well to do so — and then look
forward, and the moral can hardly be mistaken.
We find so great a thinker and writer as
Aristotle seriously pondering whether a slave
may be considered as in any sense a man. In
emphasizing the point that friendship is founded
on propinquity, he expresses himself as follows :

22 . Animals Rights,

^>

" Neither can men have friendships with horses,
cattle, or slaves, considered merely as such ;
for a slave is merely a living instrument, and
an instrument a living slave. Yet, considered
as a man, a slave may be an object of friend-
ship, for certain rights seem to belong to all
those capable of participating in law and
engagement. A slave, then, considered as a
man, may be treated justly or unjustly." ^
" Slaves," says Bentham, " have been treated
by the law exactly upon the same footing as
in England, for example, the inferior races of
animals are still. The day may come when
the rest of the animal creation may acquire,
those rights which could never have been
withholden from them but by the hand of
tyranny." '

Let us unreservedly admit the immense
difficulties that stand in the way of this
animal enfranchisement. Our relation towards
the animals is complicated and embittered by
innumerable habits handed down through
centuries of mistrust and brutality ; we can-
not, in all cases, suddenly relax these habits,
or do full justice even where we see that jus-
tice will have to be done. A perfect ethic of

^ " Ethics," book viii.

^ " Principles of Morals and Legislation."

The Principle of Animals Rights. 23

humaneness is therefore impracticable, if not
unthinkable ; and we can attempt to do no
more than to indicate in a general way the
main principle of animals' rights, noting at
the same time the most flagrant particular
violations of those rights, and the lines on
which the only valid reform can hereafter be
effected. But, on the other hand, it may be
remembered, for the comfort and encourage-
ment of humanitarian workers, that these ob-
stacles are, after all, only such as are inevitable
in each branch of social improvement ; for at
every stage of every great reformation it has
been repeatedly argued, by indifferent or
hostile observers, that further progress is im-
possible ; indeed, when the opponents of a great
cause begin to demonstrate its " impossibility,"
experience teaches us that that cause is already
on the high road to fulfilment.

As for the demand so frequently made on
reformers, that they should first explain the
details of their scheme — how this and that
point will be arranged, and by what process
all kinds of difficulties, real or imagined, will
be circumvented — the only rational reply is
that it is absurd to expect to see the end of a
question, when we are now but at its begin-
ning. The persons who offer this futile sort

24 Animals Rights.

of criticism are usually those who under no
circumstances would be open to conviction ;
they purposely ask for an explanation which,
by the very nature of the case, is impossible
because it necessarily belongs to a later period
of time. It would be equally sensible to re-
quest a traveller to enumerate beforehand all
the particular things he will see by the way,
on pain of being denounced as an unpractical
visionary, although he may have a quite suf-
ficient general knowledge of his course and
destination.

Our main principlejsjiow clear. If "rights"
exist at all — and both feeling~arid 'usage in-
dubitably prove that they do exist — they
cannot be consistently awarded to ,men and
denied to animals, since the same sense of
justice and compassion apply in both cases.
" Pain is pain," says an honest old writer,^
" whether it be inflicted on man or on beast ;
and the creature that suffers it, whether man
or beast, being sensible of the misery of it
while it lasts, suffers evil ; and the sufferance
of evil, unmeritedly, unprovokedly, where no
offence has been given, and no good can pos-
sibly be answered by it, but merely to exhibit

^ Humphry Primatt, D.D., author of "The Duty of
Mercy to Brute Animals" (1776).

The Principle of Animals Rights. 25

power or gratify malice, is Cruelty and Injus-
tice in him that occasions it."

I commend this outspoken utterance to the
attention of those ingenious moralists who
quibble about the " discipline " of suffering,
and deprecate immediate attempts to redress
what, it is alleged, may be a necessary instru-
ment for the attainment of human welfare. It
is, perhaps, a mere coincidence, but it has
been observed that those who are most for-
ward to disallow the rights of others, and to
argue that suffering and subjection are the
natural lot of all living things, are usually
themselves exempt from the operation of this
beneficent law, and that the beauty of self-
sacrifice is most loudly belauded by those
who profit most largely at the expense of their
fellow-creatures.

But " nature is one with rapine," say some,
and this Utopian theory of " rights," if too
widely extended, must come in conflict with
that iron rule of internecine competition, by
which the universe is regulated. But is the
universe so regulated ? We note that this
very objection, which was confidently relied
on a few years back by many opponents of
the emancipation of the working-classes, is
not heard of in that connection now ! Our

2 6 Anwials Rights,

learned economists and men of science, who
set themselves to play the defenders of the
social status quo, have seen their own weapons
of " natural selection, " survival of the fittest,"
and what not, snatched from their hands and
turned against them, and are therefore begin-
ning to explain to us, in a scientific manner,
what we untutored humanitarians had pre-
viously felt to be true, viz., that competition is
not by any means the sole governing law
among the human race. We are not greatly
dismayed, then, to find the same old bugbear
trotted out as an argument against animals'
rights — indeed, we see already unmistakable
signs of a similar complete reversal of the
scientific judgment.^

^ See Prince Kropotkine's articles on " Mutual Aid
among Animals," "Nineteenth Century," 1890, where
the conclusion is arrived at that " sociability is as much
a law of nature as mutual struggle." A similar view is
expressed in the "Study of Animal Life," 1892, by
J. Arthur Thomson, " What we must protest against,"
he says, in an interesting chapter on "The Struggle
of Life," " is that one-sided interpretation according
to which individualistic competition is nature's sole
method of progress. . . . The precise nature of the
means employed and ends attained must be carefully
considered when we seek from the records of animal
evolution support or justification for human conduct,"

The Principle of Aiiimals Rights. 27

The charge of " sentimentahsm " is fre-
quently brought against those who plead for
animals' rights. Now " sentimentahsm," if
any meaning at all can be attached to the
word, must signify an inequality, an ill balance
of sentiment, an inconsistency which leads
men into attacking one abuse, while they
ignore or condone another where a reform is
equally desirable. That this weakness is
often observable among " philanthropists " on
the one hand, and " friends of animals " on
the other, and most of all among those acute
" men of the world," whose regard is only for
themselves, I am not concerned to deny ;
what I wish to point out is, that the only real
safeguard against sentimentality is to take up
a consistent position towards the rights of
men and of the lower animals alike, and to
cultivate a broad sense of universal justice
(not "mercy") for all living things. Herein,
and herein alone, is to be sought the true
sanity of temperament.

It is an entire mistake to suppose that the
rights of animals are in any way antagonistic
to the rights of men. Let us not be betrayed
for a moment into the specious fallacy that
we must study human rights first, and leave
the animal question to solve itself hereafter ;

2 8 Animals Ris^Jits.

■t>

for it is only by a wide and disinterested
study of both subjects that a solution of either
is possible. " For he who loves all animated
nature," says Porphyry, " will not hate any
one tribe of innocent beings, and by how
much greater his love for the whole, by so
much the more will he cultivate justice to-
wards a part of them, and that part to which
he is most allied." To omit all worthier
reasons, it is too late in the day to suggest the
indefinite postponement of a consideration of
animals' rights, for from a moral point of view,
and even from a legislative point of view, we
are daily confronted with this momentous
problem, and the so-called " practical " people
who affect to ignore it are simply shutting
their eyes to facts which they find it disagree-
able to confront.

Once more then, animals have rights, and
these rights consist in the " restricted free-
dom " to live a natural life — a life, that is,
which permits of the individual development
— subject to the limitations imposed by the
permanent needs and interests of the com-
munity. There is nothing quixotic or visionary
in this assertion ; it is perfectly compatible
with a readiness to look the sternest laws of
existence fully and honestly in the face. If

The Principle of Animals Rights. 29

we must kill, whether it be man or animal, let
us kill and have done with it ; if we must in-
flict pain, let us do what is inevitable, without
hypocrisy, or evasion, or cant. But (here is
the cardinal point) let us first be assured that
it zj-^iecessary ; let us not wantDTrl}r trade on
the needless^Tmsedes ofjother beings, and tJien
attempt to lull our consciences by a series of
shuffling excuses which cannot endure a mo-
ment's candid investigation. As Leigh Hunt
well says :

" That there is pain and evil, is no rule
That I should make it greater, like a fool."

Thus far of the general principle of animals'
rights. We will now proceed to apply this
principle to a number of particular cases, from
which we may learn something both as to the
extent of its present violation, and the possi-
bility of its better observance in the future.

CHAPTER 11.

THE CASE OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS.

The main principle of animals' rights, if ad-
mitted to be fundamentally sound, will not be
essentially affected by the wildness or the
domesticity, as the case may be, of the animals
in question ; both classes have their rights,
though these rights may differ largely in ex-
tent and importance. It is convenient, how-
ever, to consider the subject of the domestic
animals apart from that of the wild ones, in-
asmuch as their whole relation to mankind is
so much altered and emphasized by the fact
of their subjection. Here, at any rate, it is
impossible, even for the most callous reasoners,
to deny the responsibility of man, in his deal-
ings with vast races of beings, the very condi-
tions of whose existence have been modified
by human civilization.

An incalculable mass of drudgery, at the
cost of incalculable suffering, is daily, hourly

The Case of Domestic Animals. 3 1

performed for the benefit of man by these
honest, patient labourers in every town and
country of the world. Are these countless
services to be permanently ignored in a com-
munity which makes any pretension to a
humane civilization ? Will the free citizens
of the enlightened republics of the future be
content to reap the immense advantages of
animals' labour, without recognizing that they
owe them some consideration in return ? The
question is one that carries with it its own
answer. Even now it is nowhere openly
contended that domestic animals have no
rights.^

But the human mind is subtle to evade the
full significance of its duties, and nowhere is
this more conspicuously seen than in our treat-
ment of the lower races. Given a position in
which man profits largely (or thinks he profits
largely, for it is not always a matter of cer-
tainty) by the toil or suffering of the animals,
and our respectable moralists are pretty sure
to be explaining to us that this providential
arrangement is " better for the animals them-
selves." The wish is father to the thought in

^ Auguste Comte included the domestic animals
as an organic part of the Positivist conception of
humanity.

32 Animals Rights.

these questions, and there is an accommodating
elasticity in our social ethics that permits of
the justification of almost any system which
it would be inconvenient to us to discontinue.
Thus we find it stated, and on the authority
of a bishop, that man may "lay down the
terms of the social contract between animals
and himself," because, forsooth, "the general
life of a domestic animal is one of very great
comfort — according to the animal's own stan-
dard {sic) probably one of almost perfect
happiness." ^

Now this prating about " the animal's own
standard " is nothing better than hypocritical
cant. If man is obliged to lay down the, terms
of the contract, let him at least do so without
having recourse to such a suspiciously oppor-
tune afterthought. We have taken the animals
from a free, natural state, into an artificial
thraldom, in order that we^ and not they, may
be the gainers thereby ; it cannot possibly be
maintained that they owe us gratitude on this
account, or that this alleged debt may be used
as a means of evading the just recognition of
their rights. It is the more necessary to
raise a strong protest against this Jesuitical

' " Moral Duty towards Animals," " Macmillan's
Magazine," April, 1882, by the then Bishop of Carlisle.

The Case of Domestic Animals. ^iZ

mode of reasoning, because, as we shall see, it
is so frequently employed in one form or
another, by the apologists of human tyranny.
On the other hand, I desire to keep clear
also of the extreme contrary contention, that
man is not morally justified in imposing any
sort of subjection on the lower animals.^ An
abstract question of this sort, however inte-
resting as a speculation, and impossible in itself
to disprove, is beyond the scope of the present
inquiry, which is primarily concerned with
the state of things at present existing. We
must face the fact that the services of domestic
animals have become, whether rightly or
wrongly, an integral portion of the system of
modern society ; we cannot immediately dis-
pense with those services, any more than we
can dispense with human labour itself. But
we can provide, as at least a present step
towards a more ideal relationship in the future,
that the conditions under which all labour is
performed, whether by men or by animals,

^ See Lewis Gompertz' "Moral Inquiries" (1824),
where it is argued that " at least in the present state
of society it is unjust, and considering the unnecessary
abuse they suffer from being in the power of man, it
is wrong to use them, and to encourage their being
placed in his power."

D

34 Animals Rights.

shall be such as to enable the worker to take
some appreciable pleasure in the work, instead
of experiencing a lifelong course of injustice
and ill-treatment.

And here it may be convenient to say a
word as to the existing line of demarcation
between the animals legally recognized as
" domestic," and those ferce naturcE, of wild
nature. In the Act of 1849, in which a penalty
is imposed for cruelty to " any animal," it is
expressly provided that "the word animal
shall be taken to mean any horse, mare, geld-
ing, bull, ox, cow, heifer, steer, calf, mule, ass,
sheep, lamb, hog, pig, sow, goat, dog, cat, or
any other domestic animal." It will be shown
in a later chapter that the interpretation of
this vague reference to " any other '^ domestic
animal is likely to become a point of consider-
able importance, since it closely affects the
welfare of certain animals which, though at
present regarded as wild, and therefore out-
side the pale of protection, are to all intents
and purposes in a state of domestication. For
the present, however, we may group the
domestic animals of this country in three main
divisions, (i) horses, asses, and mules ; (2)
oxen, sheep, goats, and pigs ; (3) dogs and cats.
" Food, rest, and tender usage," are declared

The Case of Domestic Anwials. 35

by Humphry Primatt, the old author already
quoted, to be the three rights of the domestic
animals. Lawrence's opinion is to much the
same effect. " Man is indispensably bound,"
he thinks, " to bestow upon animals, in return
for the benefit he derives from their services,
good and sufficient nourishment, comfortable
shelter, and merciful treatment ; to commit
no wanton outrage upon their feelings, whilst
alive, and to put them to the speediest and
least painful death, when it shall be necessary
to deprive them of life." But it is important
to note that something more is due to animals,
and especially to domestic animals, than the
mere supply of provender and the mere im-
munit)- from ill-usage. " We owe justice to
men," wrote Montaigne, " and grace and be-
nignity to other creatures that are capable of
it ; there is a natural commerce and mutual
obligation betwixt them and us." Sir Arthur
Helps admirably expressed this sentiment in
his well-known reference to the duty of " using
courtesy to animals." ^

If these be the rights of domestic animals,

it is pitiful to reflect how commonly and how

grossly they are violated. The average life of

our " beasts of burden," the horse, the ass, and

^ "Animals and their Masters," p. loi.

36 Animals Rights,

the mule, is from beginning to end a rude
negation of their individuaHty and intelHgence ;
they are habitually addressed and treated as
stupid instruments of man's will and pleasure,
instead of the highly-organized and sensitive
beings that they are. Well might Thoreau,
the humanest and most observant of naturalists,
complain of man's " not educating the horse,
not trying to develop his nature, but merely
getting work out of him ; " for such, it must
be acknowledged, is the prevalent method of
treatment, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred,
at the present day, even where there is no
actual cruelty or ill-usage/

We are often told that there is no other
western country where tame animals are so
well treated as in England, and it is only
necessary to read the records of a century back
to see that the inhumanities of the past were
far more atrocious than any that are still
practised in the present. Let us be thankful

^ The representative of an English paper lately had
a drive with Count Tolstoi. On his remarking that
he had no whip, the Count gave him a glance "almost
of scorn," and said, " I talk to my horses ; I do not
beat them." That this story should have gone the
round of the press, as a sort of marvellous legend of
a second St. Francis, is a striking comment on the
existing state of affairs.

The Case of Domestic Animals, 37

for these facts, as showing that the current of
EngHsh opinion is at least moving in the right
direction. But it must yet be said that the
sights that everywhere meet the eye of a
humane and thoughtful observer, whether in
town or country, are a disgrace to our vaunted
"civilization," and suggest the thought that,
as far as the touch of compassion is concerned,
the majority of our fellow citizens must be
obtuse, not to say pachydermatous. Watch
the cab traffic in one of the crowded thorough-
fares of one of our great cities — always the
same lugubrious patient procession of underfed
overloaded animals, the same brutal insolence
of the drivers, the same accursed sound of the
whip. And remembering that these horses
are gifted wdth a large degree of sensibility
and intelligence, must one not feel that the
fate to which they are thus mercilessly sub-
jected is a shameful violation of the principle
which moralists have laid down?

Yet it is to this fate that even the well-kept
horses of the rich must in time descend, so to
pass the declining years of a life devoted to
man's service ! " A good man," said Plutarch,
"will take care of his horses and dogs, not
only while they are young, but when old and
past service. We ought certainly not to treat

38 Animals Rights.

living" beings like shoes and household goods,
which, when worn out with use, we throw
away." Such was the feeling of the old pagan
writer, and our good Christians of the present
age scarcely seem to have improved on it.
True, they do not " throw away " their super-
annuated carriage-horses — it is so much more
lucrative to sell them to the shopman or cab-
proprietor, who will in due course pass them
on to the knacker and cat's-meat man.

The use of machinery is often condemned,
on aesthetic grounds, because of the ugliness it
has introduced into so many features of
modern life. On the other hand, it should not
be forgotten that it has immensely relieved
the huge mass of animal labour, and «that when
electricity is generally used for purposes of
traction, one of the foulest blots on our social
humanity is likely to disappear. Scientific
and mechanical invention, so far from being
necessarily antagonistic to a true beauty of
life, may be found to be of the utmost service
to it, when they are employed for humane,
and not merely commercial, purposes. Herein
Thoreau is a wiser teacher than Ruskin. " If
all were as it seems," he says,^ " and men
made the elements their servants for noble
^ "Waklen."

The Case of Domestic Animals. 39

ends ! If the cloud that hangs over the engine
were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as
beneficent as that which floats over the
farmer's fields, then the elements and Nature
herself would cheerfully accompany men on
their errands and be their escort."

It is no part of my purpose to enumerate
the various acts of injustice of which domestic
animals are the victims ; it is sufficient to
point out that the true cause of such injustice
is to be sought in the unwarrantable neglect of
their many intelligent qualities, and in the
contemptuous indifference which, in defiance
of sense and reason, still classes them as
" brute-beasts." What has been said of horses
in this respect applies still more strongly to
the second class of domestic animals. Sheep,
goats, and oxen are regarded as mere " live-
stock ; " while pigs, poultry, rabbits, and other
marketable "farm-produce," meet with even
less consideration, and are constantly treated
with very brutal inhumanity by their human
possessors.^ Let anyone who doubts this pay
a visit to a cattle-market, and study the scenes
that are enacted there.

^ Further, remarks on this subject belong more
properly to the Food Question, which is treated in
Chapter IV.

40 Animals Rights.

The question of the castration of animals
may here be briefly referred to. That nothing
but imperative necessity could justify such a
practice must I think be admitted ; for an
unnatural mutilation of this kind is not only
painful in itself, but deprives those who undergo
it of the most vigorous and spirited elements
of their character. It is said — with what pre-
cise amount of truth I cannot pretend to
determine — that man would not otherwise be
able to maintain his dominion over the domes-
tic animals ; but on the other hand it may be
pointed out that this dominion is in no case
destined to be perpetuated in its present
sharply-accentuated form, and that various
practices which, in a sense, are " necessary "
now, — i.e. in the false position and relationship
in which we stand towards the animals, — will
doubtless be gradually discontinued under the
humaner system of the future. Moreover,
castration as performed on cattle, sheep, pigs,
and fowls, with no better object than to in-
crease their size and improve their flavour for
the table, is, even at the present time, utterly
needless and unjustifiable. " The bull," as
Shelley says, " must be degraded into the ox,
and the ram into the wether, by an unnatural
and inhuman operation, that the flaccid fibre

The Case of Domestic Animals. 41

may offer a fainter resistance to rebellious
nature." In all its aspects, this is a disagree-
able subject, and one about which the majority
of people do not care to think — probably from
an unconscious perception that the established
custom could scarcely survive the critical
ordeal of thought.

There remains one other class of domestic
animals, viz., those who have become still
more closely associated with mankind through
being the inmates of their homes. The dog
is probably better treated on the whole than
any other animal ; ^ though to prove how far
we still are from a rational and consistent
appreciation of his worth, it is only necessary
to point to the fact that he is commonly
regarded by a large number of educated people
as a fit and proper subject for that experi-
mental torture which is known as vivisection.
The cat has always been treated with far less
consideration than the dog, and, despite the
numerous scattered instances that might be
cited to the contrary, it is to be feared that
De Ouincey was in the main correct, when he
remarked that " the eroans and screams of

iD'

^ The use of dogs for purposes of draught was pro-
hibited in London m 1839, and in 1854 this enactment
was extended to the whole kingdom.

4-2 Animals Rights.

this poor persecuted race, if gathered into
some great echoing hall of horrors, would melt
the heart of the stoniest of our race." The
institution of " Homes " for lost and starving
dogs and cats is a welcome sign of the humane
feeling that is asserting itself in some quarters;
but it is also no less a proof of the general
indifferentism which can allow the most
familiar domestic animals to become home-
less.

It may be doubted, indeed, whether the
condition of the household " pet " is, in the
long run, more enviable than that of the
" beast of burden." Pets, like kings' favourites,
are usually the recipients of an abundance of
sentimental affection but of little real kind-
ness ; so much easier is it to give temporary
caresses than substantial justice. It seems to
be forgotten, in a vast majority of cases, that
a domestic animal does not exist for the m.ere
idle amusement, any more than for the mere
commercial profit, of its human owner ; and
that for a living being to be turned into a use-
less puppet is only one degree better than to
be doomed to the servitude of a drudge. The
injustice done to the pampered lap-dog is as
conspicuous, in its way, as that done to the
over-worked horse, and both spring from one

The Case of Domestic Animals. 43

and the same origin — the fixed behef that the
Hfe of a "brute" has no "moral purpose," no
distinctive personality worthy of due considera-
tion and development. In a society where the
lower animals were regarded as intelligent be-
ings, and not as animated machines, it would
be impossible for this incongruous absurdity
to continue.

This, then, appears to be our position as
regards the rights of domestic animals. Waiv-
ing, on the one hand, the somewhat abstruse
question whether man is morally justified in
utilizing animal labour at all, and on the other
the fatuous assertion that he is constituting
himself a benefactor by so doing, we recognize
that the services of domestic animals have, by
immemorial usage, become an important and,
it may even be said, necessary element in the
economy of modern life. It is impossible,
unless every principle of justice is to be cast
to the winds, that the due requital of these ser-
vices should remain a matter of personal
caprice; for slavery is at all times hateful and
iniquitous, whether it be imposed on mankind
or on the lower races. Apart from the uni-
versal rights they possess in common with all
intelligent beings, domestic animals have a
special claim on man's courtesy and sense of

44 Animals Rights.

fairness, inasmuch as they are not his fellow-
creatures only, but his fellow-workers, his
dependents, and in many cases the familiar
associates and trusted inmates of his home.

CHAPTER III.

THE CASE OF WILD ANIMALS.

That wild animals, no less than domestic
animals, have their rights, albeit of a less
positive character and far less easy to define,
is an essential point which follows directly
from the acceptance of the general principle
of a jus anhnalium. It is of the utmost im-
portance to emphasize the fact that, whatever
the legal fiction may have been, or may still
be, the rights of animals are not morally de-
pendent on the so-called rights of pro-
perty ; it is not to owned animals merely
that we must extend our sympathy and pro-
tection.

The domination of property has left its trail
indelibly on the records of this question. Until
the passing of ''Martin's Act" in 1822, the
most atrocious cruelty, even to domestic
animals, could only be punished where there
was proved to be an infringement of the rights

46 Animals Rights.

of ownership.^ This monstrous iniquity, so far
as relates to the domestic animals, has now
been removed ; but the only direct legal pro-
tection yet accorded to wild animals (except
in the Wild Birds' Protection Act of 1880) is
that which prohibits their being baited or
pitted in conflict ; otherwise, it is open for
anyone to kill or torture them with impunity,
except where the sacred privileges of " pro-
perty " are thereby offended. " Everywhere,"
it has been well said, " it is absolutely a capital
crime to be an unowned creature."

Yet surely an unowned creature has the
same right as another to live his life un-
molested and uninjured except when this is in
some way inimical to human welfare.. We
are justified by the strongest of all instincts,
that of self-defence, in safe-guarding ourselves
against such a multiplication of any species of
animal as might imperil the established supre-
macy of man ; but we are not justified in un-
necessarily killing — still less in torturing — any
harmless beings whatsoever. In this respect
the position of wild animals, in their relation
to man, is somewhat analogous to that of the
uncivilized towards the civilized nations. No-

^ See the excellent remarks on this subject in Mr.
E. B.Nicholson's "The Rights of an Animal" (ch. III.).

The Case of Wild Animals. 47

thing is more difficult than to determine pre-
cisely to what extent it is morally permissible
to interfere with the autonomy of savage tribes
— an interference which seems in some cases
to conduce to the general progress of the race,
in others to foster the worst forms of cruelty
and injustice ; but it is beyond question that
savages, like other people, have the right to be
exempt from all wanton insult and degrada-
tion.

In the same way, while admitting that man
is justified, by the exigencies of his own des-
tiny, in asserting his supremacy over the wild
animals, we must deny him any right to turn
his protectorate into a tyranny, or to inflict
one atom more of subjection and pain than is
absolutely unavoidable. To take advantage
of the sufferings of animals, whether wild or
tame, for the gratification of sport, or gluttony,
or fashion, is quite incompatible with any
possible assertion of animals' rights. We
may kill, if necessary, but never torture or
degrade.

" The laws of self-defence," says an old
writer,^ "undoubtedly justify us in destroying
those animals who would destroy us, who in-

^ " On Cruelty to the Inferior Animals," by Soame
Jenyns, 1782.

48 Animals Rights,

jure our properties or annoy our persons ; but
not even these, whenever their situation in-
capacitates them from hurting us. I know of
no right which we have to shoot a bear on an
inaccessible island of ice, or an eagle on the
mountain's top, whose lives cannot injure us,
nor deaths procure us any benefit. We are
unable to give life, and therefore ought not to
take it away from the meanest insect without
sufficient reason."

I reserve, for fuller consideration in subse-
quent chapters, certain problems which are
suggested by the wholesale slaughter of wild
animals by the huntsman or the trapper, for
purposes which are loosely supposed to be
necessary and inevitable. Meantime a word
must be said about the condition of those
tamed or caged animals which, though wild
by nature, and not bred in captivity, are yet
to a certain extent " domesticated " — a class
which stands midway between the true do-
mestic and the wild. J[s the imprisonment of
such animals a violation of the principle we
have laid down? Tnrnost cases I fear this
question can only be answered in the affir-
mative.

And here, once more I must protest against
the common assumption that these captive

The Case of Wild Animals. 49

animals are laid under an obligation to man by
the very fact of their captivity, and that there-
fore no complaint can be made on the score
of their loss of freedom and the many miseries
involved therein ! It is extraordinary that
even humane thinkers and earnest champions
of animals' rights, should permit themselves
to be misled by this most fallacious and flimsy
line of argument. " Harmful animals," says
one of these writers,* " and animals with whom
man has to struggle for the fruits of the earth,
may of course be so shut up : they gain by it,
for otherwise they would not have been let live."
And so in like manner it is sometimes con-
tended that a menagerie is a sort of paradise
for wild beasts, whose loss of liberty is more
than compensated by the absence of the con-
stant apprehension and insecurity which, it is
conveniently assumed, weigh so heavily on
their spirits. But all this notion of their
" gaining by it " is in truth nothing more than
a mere arbitrary supposition ; for, in the first
place, a speedy death may, for all we know,
be very preferable to a protracted death-in-
life ; while, secondly, the pretence that wild
animals enjoy captivity is even more absurd
than the episcopal contention ^ that the life of

^ Mr. E. B. Nicholson. ^ See p. 32.

E

50 Animals Rights.

a domestic animal is " one of very great com-
fort, according to the animal's own standard."
To take a wild animal from its free natural
state, full of abounding egoism and vitality,
and to shut it up for the wretched remainder
of its life in a cell where it has just space to
turn round, and where it necessarily loses
every distinctive feature of its character — this
appears to me to be as downright a denial
as could well be imagined of the theory of
animals' rights.^ Nor is there very much force
in the plea founded on the alleged scientific
value of these zoological institutions, at any
rate in the case of the wilder and less tractable
animals, for it cannot be maintained that the
establishment of wild-beast shows is in any
way necessary for the advancement of human
knowledge. For what do the good people see

^ I subjoin a sentence, copied by me from one of
the note-books of the late James Thomson (" B.V.") :
" It being a very wet Sunday, I had to keep in, and
paced much prisoner-Hke to and fro my room. This
reminded me of the wild beasts at Regent's Park, and
especially of the great wild birds, the vultures and
eagles. How they must suffer ! How long will it be
ere the thought of such agonies becomes intolerable
to the public conscience, and wild creatures be left at
liberty when they need not be killed ? Three or four
centuries, perhaps."

The Case of IVild Animals. 51

who go to the gardens on a half-holiday after-
noon to poke their umbrellas at a blinking
eagle-owl, or to throw dog-biscuits down the
expansive throat of a hippopotamus? Not
wild beasts or wild birds certainly, for there
never have been or can be such in the best of
all possible menageries, but merely the outer
semblances and simulacra of the denizens of
forest and prairie — poor spiritless remnants of
what were formerly wild animals. To kill and
stuff these victims of our morbid curiosity, in-
stead of immuring them in lifelong imprison-
ment, would be at once a humaner and a
cheaper method, and could not possibly be of
less use to science.^

But of course these remarks do not apply,
with anything like the same force, to the
taming of such wild animals as are readily
domesticated in captivity, or trained by man
to some intelligible and practical purpose.
For example, though we may look forward to

^ Unfortunately they are not of much value even
for that purpose, owing to the deterioration of health
and vigour caused by their imprisonment. " The
skeletons of aged carnivora," says Dr. W. B. Car-
penter, " are often good for nothing as museum speci-
mens, their bones being. rickety and distorted." Could
there be a more convincing proof than this of the
inhumanity of these exhibitions ?

52 Animals Rights.

the time when It will not be deemed necessary
to convert wild elephants into beasts of burden,
it must be acknowledged that the exaction of
such service, however questionable in itself, is
very different from condemning an animal to
a long term of useless and deadening imbe-
cility. There can be no absolute standard of
morals in these matters, whether it be human
liberty or animal liberty that is at stake ; I
merely contend that it is as incumbent on us
to show good reason for curtailing the one as
the other. This would be at once recognised,
but for the prevalent habit of regarding the
lower animals as devoid of moral purpose and
individuality.

The caging of wild song-birds is another
practice which deserves the strongest reproba-
tion. It is often pleaded that the amusement
given by these unfortunate prisoners to the
still more unfortunate human prisoners of the
sick-room, or the smoky city, is a justification
for their sacrifice ; but surely such excuses rest
only on habit — habitual inability or unwilling-
ness to look facts in the face. Few invalids, I
fancy, would be greatly cheered by the captive
life that hangs at their window, if they had
fully considered how blighted and sterilized a
life it must be. The bird-catcher's trade and

The Case of Wild Animals. 53

the bird-catcher's shop are aHke full of horrors,
and they are horrors which are due entirely to
a silly fashion and a habit of callous thought-
lessness, not on the part of the ruffianly bird-
catcher (ruffianly enough, too often,) who has
to bear the burden of the odium attaching to
these cruelties, but of the respectable customers
who buy captured larks and linnets without
the smallest scruple or consideration.

Finally, let me point out that if we desire to
cultivate a closer intimacy with the wild
animals, it must be an intimacy based on a
genuine love for them as living beings and
fellow-creatures, not on the superior power or
cunning by which we can drag them from
their native haunts, warp the whole purpose
of their lives, and degrade them to the level
of pets, or curiosities, or labour-saving auto-
mata. The key to a proper understanding of
the wild, as of the tame, animals must always
lie in such sympathies — sympathies, as Words-
worth describes them,

"Aloft ascending, and descending deep,
Even to the inferior Kinds ; whom forest trees
Protect from beating sunbeams and the sweep
Of the sharp winds ; fair Creatures, to whom Heaven
A cahii and sinless life, with love, has given."

CHAPTER IV.

THE SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS FOR FOOD.

It is impossible that any discussion of the
principle of animals' rights can be at all ade-
quate or conclusive which ignores, as many
so-called humanitarians still ignore, the im-
mense underlying importance of the food
question. The origin of the habit of flesh-eating
need not greatly concern us ; let us assume,
in accordance with the most favoured theory,
that animals were first slaughtered by the un-
civilized migratory tribes under the stress of
want, and that the practice thus engendered,
being fostered by the religious idea of blood-
offering and propitiation, survived and in-
creased after the early conditions which pro-
duced it had passed away. What is more im-
portant to note, is that the very prevalence of
the habit has caused it to be regarded as a
necessary feature of modern civilisation, and
that this view has inevitably had a marked

The Slaitghtcr of Animals for Food. 55

effect, and a very detrimental effect, on the
study of man's moral relation to the lower
animals.

Now it must be admitted, I think, that it is
a difficult thing consistently to recognise or
assert the rights of an animal on whom you
purpose to make a meal, a difficulty which has
not been at all satisfactorily surmounted by
those moralists who, while accepting the prac-
tice of flesh-eating as an institution which is
itself beyond cavil, have nevertheless been
anxious to find some solid basis for a theory
of humaneness. " Strange contrariety of con-
duct," says Goldsmith's " Chinese Philosopher,"
in commenting on this dilemma ; " they pity,
and they eat the objects of their compassion !"
There is also the further consideration that
the sanction implicitly given to the terrible
cruelties inflicted on harmless cattle by the
drover and the slaughterman render it, by
parity of reasoning, well-nigh impossible to
abolish many other acts of injustice that we
see everywhere around us ; and this obstacle
the opponents of humanitarian reform have
not been slow to utilise.^ Hence a disposition

^ Here are two instances urged on behalf of the
vivisector and the sportsman respectively. " If man
can legitimately put animals to a painful death in

56 Animals Rights.

on the part of many otherwise humane writers
to fight shy of the awkward subject of the
slaughterhouse, or to gloss it over with a
series of contradictory and quite irrelevant
excuses.

Let me give a few examples. " We deprive
animals of life," says Bentham, in a delight-
fully naive application of the utilitarian philo-
sophy, " and this is justifiable ; their pains do
not equal our enjoyments."

" By the scheme of universal providence,"
says Lawrence, " the services between man
and beast are intended to be reciprocal, and
the greater part of the latter can by no other
means requite human labour and care than by
the forfeiture of life."

Schopenhauer's plea is somewhat similar to
the foregoing : " Man deprived of all flesh
food, especially in the north, would suffer more
than the animal suffers in a swift and unfore-

order to supply himself with food and luxuries, why-
may he not also legitimately put them to pain, and
even to death, for the higher object of relieving the
sufferings of humanity.-^" — Chambers^ s EiicydopcEdia,
1884.

" If they were called upon to put an end to pigeon-
shooting, they might next be called upon to put an
end to the slaughter of live-stock." — LORD FORTESCUE,
Debate on Pigeon-Slwotijig (1-884).

The Slaiighter of Animals for Food. 57

seen death ; still we ought to mitigate it by
the help of chloroform."

Then there is the argument so frequently
founded on the supposed sanction of Nature.
" My scruples," wrote Lord Chesterfield, " re-
mained unreconciled to the committing of so
horrid a meal, till upon serious reflection I
became convinced of its legality from the
general order of Nature, which has instituted
the universal preying upon the weaker as one
of her first principles."

Finally, we find the redoubtable Paley dis-
carding as valueless the whole appeal to
Nature, and relying on the ordinances of
Holy Writ. " A right to the flesh of animals.
Some excuse seems necessary for the pain and
loss which we occasion to animals by restrain-
ing them of their liberty, mutilating their
bodies, and at last putting an end to their
lives for our pleasure or convenience. The
reasons alleged in vindication of this practice
are the following : that the several species of
animals being created to prey upon one
another affords a kind of analogy to prove
that the human species were intended to feed
upon them. . . . Upon which reason I would
observe that the analogy contended for is ex-
tremely lame, since animals have no power to

58 Animals Rights.

support life by any other means, and since we
have, for the whole human species might sub-
sist entirely upon fruit, pulse, herbs, and roots,
as many tribes of Hindus actually do. . . .
It seems to me that it would be difficult to
defend this right by any arguments which the
light and order of Nature afford, and that we
are beholden for it to the permission recorded
in Scripture."

It is evident from the above quotations,
which might be indefinitely extended, that
the fable of the Wolf and the Lamb is con-
stantly repeating itself in the attitude of our
moralists and philosophers towards the victinris
of the slaughter-house! Well might Humphry
Primatt remark that " we ransack and rack
all nature in her weakest and tenderest parts,
to extort from her, if possible, any concession
whereon to rest the appearance of an argu-
ment."

Far wiser and humaner, on this particular
subject, is the tone adopted by such writers
as Michelet, who, while not seeing any way of
escape from the practice of flesh-eating, at
least refrain from attempting to support it by
fallacious reasonings. " The animals below
us," says Michelet, " have also their rights
before God. Animal life, sombre mystery !

The Slaughter of A iiimals for Food. 5 9

Immense world of thoughts and of dumb
sufferings ! All nature protests against the
barbarity of man, who misapprehends, who
humiliates, who tortures his inferior brethren.
. . . . Life — death ! The daily murder which
feeding upon animals implies — those hard and
bitter problems sternly placed themselves
before my mind. Miserable contradiction !
Let us hope that there may be another globe
in which the base, the cruel fatalities of this
may be spared to us." ^

MeantimiC, however, the simple fact remains
true, and is every year finding more and more
scientific corroboration, that there is no such
" cruel fatality " as that which Michelet ima-
gined. Comparative anatomy has shown that
man is not carnivorous, but frugivorous, in his
natural structure ; experience has shown that
flesh-food is wholly unnecessary for the sup-
port of healthy life. The importance of this
more general recognition of a truth which has
in all ages been familiar to a few enlightened
thinkers, can hardly be over-estimated in its
bearing on the question of animals' rights. It
clears away a difficulty which has long damped
the enthusiasm, or warped the judgment, of
the humaner school of European moralists,
' "La Bible de rHumanitc."

6o Animals Rwhts.

^>

and makes it possible to approach the subject
of man's moral relation to the lower animals
in a more candid and fearless spirit of enquiry.
It is no part of my present purpose to advo-
cate the cause of vegetarianism ; but in view
of the mass of evidence, readily obtainable/
that the transit and slaughter of animals are
necessarily attended by most atrocious cruel-
ties, and that a large number of persons have
for years been living healthily without the
use of flesh-meat, it must at least be said
that to omit this branch of the subject from
the most earnest and strenuous considera-
tion is playing with the question of animals'
rights. Fifty or a hundred years ago^ there
w^as perhaps some excuse for supposing
that vegetarianism was a mere fad ; there
is absolutely no such excuse at the present
time.

There are two points of especial significance
in this connection. First, that as civilisation
advances, the cruelties inseparable from the
slaughtering system have been aggravated
rather than diminished, owing both to the

^ From any of the following societies : The Vege-
tarian Society, 75, Princess Street, Manchester; the
London Vegetarian Society, Memorial Hall, E.G. ; the
National Food Reform Society, 13, Rathbone Place, W.

The Slaughter of Animals for Food, 6i

increased necessity of transporting animals
long distances by sea and land, under con-
ditions of hurry and hardship which generally
preclude any sort of humane regard for their
comfort, and to the clumsy and barbarous
methods of slaughtering too often practised in
those ill-constructed dens of torment known
as " private slaughter-houses." ^

Secondly, that the feeling of repugnance
caused among all people of sensibility and
refinement by the sight, or mention, or even
thought, of the business of the butcher are also
largely on the increase ; so that the details of
the revolting process are, as far as possible,
kept carefully out of sight and out of mind,
being delegated to a pariah class who do the
work which most educated persons would
shrink from doing for themselves. In these
two facts we have clear evidence, first that
there is good reason why the public conscience,
or at any rate the humanitarian conscience,
should be uneasy concerning the slaughter of
" live-stock," and secondly that this uneasiness

^ If any reader thinks there is exaggeration in this
statement, let him study (i) " Cattle Ships," by Samuel
Plimsoll, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubnerand Co., i8go ;
(2) "Behind the Scenes in Slaughter-houses," by H. F.
Lester, Wm. Reeves, 1892.

62 Animals RioJits.

a>

is already to a large extent developed and
manifested.

The common argument, adopted by many
apologists of flesh-eating, as of fox-hunting,
that the pain inflicted by the death of the
animals is more than compensated by the
pleasure enjoyed by them in their life-time,
since otherwise they would not have been
brought into existence at all, is ingenious
rather than convincing, being indeed none
other than the old familiar fallacy already
commented on — the arbitrary trick of con-
stituting ourselves the spokesmen and the
interpreters of our victims. Mr. E. B. Nichol-
son, for example, is of opinion that " we may
pretty safely take it that if he [the fox] were
able to understand and answer the question,
he would choose life, with all its pains and
risks, to non-existence without them." ^ Un-
fortunately for the soundness of this sus-
piciously partial assumption, there is no re-
corded instance of this strange alternative
having ever been submitted either to fox or
philosopher ; so that a precedent has yet to
be established on which to found a judgment.
Meantime, instead of committing the gross
absurdity of talking of non-existence as a state
1 "The Rights of an Animal," 1879.

The Slaughtei' of Animals for Food. 6

which is good, or bad, or in any way com-
parable to existence, we might do well to
remember that animals' rights, if we admit
them at all, must begin with the birth, and
can only end with the death, of the animals in
question, and that we cannot evade our just
responsibilities by any such quibbling refe-
rences to an imaginary ante-natal choice in an
imaginary ante-natal condition.

The most mischievous effect of the practice
of flesh-eating, in its influence on the study of
animals' rights at the present time, is that it
so stultifies and debases the very raison d'etre
of countless myriads of beings — it brings them
into life for no better purpose than to deny
their right to live. It is idle to appeal to the
internecine warfare that we see in some as-
pects of wild nature, where the weaker animal
is often the prey of the stronger, for there
(apart from the fact that co-operation largely
modifies competition) the weaker races at least
live their own lives and take their chance in the
game, whereas the victims of the human car-
nivora are bred, and fed, and from the first pre-
destined to untimely slaughter, so that their
whole mode of living is warped from its natural
standard, and they are scarcely more than
animated beef or mutton or pork. This, I

64 Animals Rights,

contend, is a flagrant violation of the rights of
the lower animals, as those rights are now
beginning to be apprehended by the humaner
conscience of mankind. It has been well said
that " to keep a man (slave or servant) for
your own advantage merely, to keep an
animal that you may eat it, is a lie. You
cannot look that man or animal in the
face." '

That those who are aware of the horrors
involved in slaughtering, and also aware of the
possibility of a fleshless diet, should think it
sufficient to oppose " scriptural permission " as
an answer to the arguments of food-reformers
is an instance of the extraordinary power of
custom to blind the eyes and the hearts of
otherwise humane men. The following pas-
sage is quoted from a "Plea for Mercy to
Animals," ^ as a typical instance of the sort of
perverted sentiment to which I allude. " Not
in superstitious India only," says the writer,
whose ideas of what constitutes " superstition"
seem to • be rather confused, " but in this
country, there are vegetarians, and other per-
sons, who object to the use of animal food, not
on the ground of health only, but as involving

^ Edward Carpenter, "England's Ideal."
^ By J. Macaulay (Partridge and Co., 1881).

The Sla7ighter of Animals for Food, 65

a power to which man has no right. To such
statements we have only to oppose the clear
permission of the divine Author of life. But
the unqualified permission can never give
sanction to the infliction of unnecessary
pain."

But if the use of flesh-meat can itself be
dispensed with, how can it be argued that the
pain, which is inseparable from slaughtering,
can be otherwise than unnecessary also ? I
trust that the cause of humanity and jus-
tice (not " mercy ") to the lower animals
is not likely to be retarded by any such
sentimental and superstitious objections as
these !

Reform of diet will doubtless be slow, and
attended in many individual cases with its
difficulties and drawbacks. But at least we
may lay down this much as incumbent on all
humanitarian thinkers — that everyone must
satisfy himself of the necessity, the real neces-
sity, of the use of flesh-food, before he comes
to any intellectual conclusion on the subject of
animals' rights. It is easy to see that, as the ques-
tion is more and more discussed, the result will
be more and more decisive. " Whatever my
own practice may be," v/rote Thoreau, " I have
no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the

F

66 A^iimals Rights.

human race, in its gradual improvement, to
leave off eating animals, as surely as the
savage tribes have left off eating each other
when they came in contact with the more
civilized."

CHAPTER V.

SPORT, OR AMATEUR BUTCHERY.

That particular form of recreation which is
euphemistically known as " sport " has a close
historical connection with the practice of flesh-
eating, inasmuch as the hunter was in old
times what the butcher is now, — the "purveyor"
on whom the family was dependent for its
daily supply of victuals. Modern sport, how-
ever, as usually carried on in civilised European
countries, has degenerated into what has been
well described as "amateur butchery," a system
under which the slaughter of certain kinds of
animals is practised less as a necessity than as
a means of amusement and diversion. Just as
the youthful nobles, during the savage scenes
and reprisals of the Huguenot wars, used to
seize the opportunity of exercising their
swordsmanship, and perfecting themselves in
the art of dealing graceful death-blows, so the
modern sportsman converts the killing of

68 Animals Rie:hts.

<b

animals from a prosaic and perhaps distasteful
business into an agreeable and gentlemanly
pastime.

Now, on the very face of it, this amateur
butchery is, in one sense, the most wanton and
indefensible of all possible violations of the
principle of animals' rights. If animals — or
men, for that matter — have of necessity to be
killed, let them be killed accordingly ; but to
seek one's own amusement out of the death-
pangs of other beings, this is saddening stupi-
dity indeed ! Wisely did Wordsworth incul-
cate as the moral of his " Hartleap Well,"

" Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."

But the sporting instinct is due to sheer callous-
ness and Insensibility ; the sportsman, by force
of habit, or by force of hereditary influence,
cannot understand or sympathize with the suf-
ferings he causes, and being, in the great ma-
jority of Instances, a man of slow perception,
he naturally finds it much easier to follow the
hounds than to follow an argument. And
here, in his chief blame, lies also his chief ex-
cuse ; for it may be said of him, as It cannot
be said of certain other tormentors, that he
really does not comprehend the Import of what

sport, or Amatacr Butchery. 69

he is doing. Whether this ultimately makes
his position better or worse, is a point for the
casuist to decide.

That " it would have to be killed anyhow "
is a truly deplorable reason for torturing any
animal whatsoever ; it is an argument which
would equally have justified the worst bar-
barities of the Roman amphitheatre. To ex-
terminate wolves, and other dangerous species,
may indeed, at certain places and times, be
necessary and justifiable enough. But the
sportsman nowadays will not even perform
this practical service of exterminating such
animals — the fox, for example^as are noxious
to the general interests of the community; on
the contrary, he " preserves " them (note the
unintended humour of the term !), and then,
by a happy afterthought, claims the gratitude
of the animals themselves for his humane and
benevolent interposition.^ In plain words, he
first undertakes to rid the country of a pest,
and then, finding the process an enjoyable one
to himself, he contrives that it shall never be

^ I copy the following typical argument from a
recent article in a London paper. " If we stay fox-
hunting— which sport makes something of some of
us — foxes will die far more brutal deaths in cruel
vermin-traps, until there are none left to die."

70 Animals Rights.

brous^ht to a conclusion. Prometheus had
precisely as much reason to be grateful to the
vulture for eternally gnawing at his liver, as
have the hunted animals to thank the pre-
daceous sportsmen who "preserve" them.
Let me once more enter a protest against the
canting Pharisaism which is afraid to take the
just responsibility of its own selfish pleasure-
seeking.

"What name should we bestow," said a
humane essayist of the eighteenth century,^
"on a superior being who, without provocation
or advantage, should continue from day to day,
void of all pity and remorse, to torment man-
kind for diversion, and at the same time
endeavour with the utmost care to preserve
their lives and to propagate their species, in
order to increase the number of victims de-
voted to his malevolence, and be delighted in
proportion to the miseries which he occasioned?
I say, what name detestable enough could we
find for such a being ? Yet, if we impartially
consider the case, and our intermediate situa-
tion, we must acknowledge that, with regard
to the inferior animals, just such a being is the
sportsman."

The excuses alleged in favour of English
^ Soame Jenyns, 1782.

sport, or Amatcitr DittcJicry. 7 i

field-sports in general, and of hunting in par-
ticular, are for the most part as irrelevant as
they are unreasonable. It is often said that
the manliness of our national character would
be injuriously affected by the discontinuance
of these sports — a strange argument, when one
considers the very unequal, and therefore un-
manly, conditions of the strife. But, apart
from this consideration, what right can we
possess to cultivate these personal qualities at
the expense of unspeakable suffering to the
lower races? Such actions may be pardonable
in a savage, or in a schoolboy in whom the
savage nature still largely predominates, but
they are wholly unworthy of a civilised and
rational man.

As for the nonsense sometimes talked about
the beneficial effects of those field-sports which
bring men into contact with the sublimities of
nature, I will only repeat what I have else-
where said on this subject, that "the dynamiters
who cross the ocean to blow up an English
town might on this principle justify the object
of their journey by the assertion that the sea-
voyage brought them in contact with the
exalting and ennobling influence of the At-
lantic." ^

^ As further example of the stuff to which the apolo-

72 Animals Rights,

As the case stands between the sportsman
and his victims, there cannot be much doubt
as to whence the benefits proceed, and from
which party the gratitude is due. " Woe to
the ungrateful ! " says Michelet. " By this
phrase I mean the sporting crowd, who, un-
mindful of the numerous benefits we owe to
the animals, exterminate innocent life. A
terrible sentence weighs on the tribes of
sportsmen — they can create nothing. They
originate no art, no industry .... It is a
shocking and hideous thing to see a child
partial to sport ; to see woman enjoying and
admiring murder, and encouraging her child.
That delicate and sensitive woman would not
give him a knife, but she gives him a gun."

The sports of hunting and coursing are a
brutality which could not be tolerated for a
day in a state which possessed anything more
than the mere name of justice, freedom, and
enlightenment. " Nor can they comprehend,"
says Sir Thomas More of his model citizens

gists of sport are reduced in their search for an argu-
ment, the following may be cited. " For what object
was given the scent of the hound, and the exultation
with which he abandons himself to the chase? If he
were not thus employed, for what valuable purpose
.could he be used ?"

sport, or Amateur Butchery. j^

in " Utopia," " the pleasure of seeing dogs run
after a hare more than of seeing one dog run
after another ; for if the seeing them run is
that which gives the pleasure, you have the
same entertainment to the eye on both these
occasions, since that is the same in both cases ;
but if the pleasure lies in seeing the hare killed
and torn by the dogs, this ought rather to stir
pity, that a weak, harmless, and fearful hare
should be devoured by strong, fierce, and
cruel dogs."

To be accurate, the zest of sport lies neither
in the running nor the killing, as such, but in
the excitement caused by the fact that a life
(some one else's life) is at stake, that the
pursuer is matched in a fierce game of hazard
against the pursued. The opinion has been
expressed, by one well qualified to speak with
authority on the subject, that " well-laid drags,
tracked by experts, would test the mettle both
of hounds and riders to hounds, but then a
terrified, palpitating, fleeing life would not be
struggling ahead, and so the idea is not
pleasing to those who find pleasure in blood.^

The case is even worse when the quarry is
to all intents and purposes domesticated, an

' " The Horrors of Sport," by Lady Florence Dixie,
1892.

74 Animals Rights.

animal wild by nature, but by force of circum-
stances and surroundings tame. Such are the
Ascot stags, the victims of the Royal Sport,
which is one of the last and least justifiable
relics of feudal barbarism/ I would here
remark that there is urgent need that the laws
which relate to the humane treatment of
animals should be amended, or more wisely
interpreted, on this particular point, so as to
afford immediate protection to these domesti-
cated stags, whose torture, under the name
and sanction of the Crown and the State, has
been long condemned by the public conscience.
Bear-baiting and cock-fighting have now been
abolished by legal enactment, and it is high
time that the equally demoralising sport of
hunting of tame stags should be relegated to
the same category.^

^ See " Royal Sport, some Facts concerning the
Queen's Buckhounds," by the Rev. J. Stratton.

^ As long ago as 1877 a prosecution for the torture
of a hind by the Royal Buckhounds was instituted by
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
The hind was worried for more than an hour by six
hounds, and fearfully mutilated. But though a dozen
eye-witnesses were forthcoming, and the skin of the
animal was in possession of the Society (it may be
seen to this day at the office in Jermyn Street), the
case was dismissed by the magistrates on the absurd

sport, or Aiuatetir Butchery. 75

The same must be said of some sports which
are practised by the EngHsh working man —
rabbit-coursing, in particular, that half-hohday
diversion which is so popular in many villages
of the North/ An attempt is often made by
the apologists of amateur butchery to play off
one class against another in the discussion of
this question. They protest, on the one hand,
against any interference with aristocratic sport,
on the plea that working men are no less
addicted to such pastimes ; and, on the other
hand, a cry is raised against the unfairness of
restricting the amusements of the poor, while
noble lords and ladies are permitted to hunt
the carted stag with impunity.

The obvious answer to these quibbling ex-
cuses is that all such barbarities, whether
practised by rich or poor, are alike condemned
by any conceivable principle of justice and
humaneness ; and, further, that it is a doubtful
compliment to working men to suggest that
they have nothing better to do in their spare
hours than to torture defenceless rabbits. It

ground that a stag is ferce natin-cc^ and all evidence
and argument were thus purposely shut out. See the
"Animal World" for June ist, 1877.

^ See " Rabbit-Coursing, an Appeal to Working
Men," by Dr. R. H. Jude, 1892.

76 Animals Rio-Jits.

s

was long ago remarked by Martin, the author
of the famous Act of 1822, that such an argu-
ment indicates at bottom a contempt rather
than regard for the working classes ; it is as
much as to say, " Poor creatures, let them
alone — they have few amusements — let them
enjoy them."

Nothing can be more shocking than the
treatment commonly accorded to rabbits, rats,
and other small animals, on ' the plea that
they are " vermin," and therefore, it is tacitly
assumed, outside the pale of humanity and
justice ; we have here another instance of
the way in which the application of a con-
temptuous name may aggravate and increase^
the actual tendency to barbarous ill-usage
How many a demoralising spectacle, especially
where the young are concerned, is witnessed
when " fun " is made out of the death and
torture of " vermin ! " How horrible is the
practice, apparently universal throughout all
country districts, of setting steel traps along
the ditches and hedgerows, in which the vrc-^
tims are frequently left to linger, in an agony
of pain and apprehension, for hours or even
days ! If the lower races have any rights
soever, here surely is a flagrant and inex-
cusable outrage on such rights. Yet there are

sport, oi"- Amateur DiUchcry. y^

no means of redressing these barbarities, be-
cause the laws, such as they are, which pro-
hibit cruelty to animals, are not designed to
take any cognizance of " vermin."

All that has been said of hunting and cours-
ing is applicable also — in a less degree, per-
haps, but on exactly the same principle — to
the sports of shooting and fishing. It does
not in the least matter, so far as the question
of animals' rights is concerned, whether you
run your victim to death with a pack of yelp-
ing hounds, or shoot him with a gun, or drag
him from his native w^aters by a hook ; the
point at issue is simply whether man is jus-
tified in inflicting any form of death or suffer-
ing on the lower races for his mere amuse-
ment and caprice. There can be little doubt
what answer must be given to this question.

In concluding this chapter, let me quote a
striking testimony to the wickedness and in-
justice of sport, as exhibited in one of its most
refined and fashionable forms, the " cult of the
pheasant." " For what is it," says Lady
Florence Dixie,^ " but the deliberate massacre
in cold blood every year of thousands and
tens of thousands of tame, hand-reared birds
who are literally driven into the jaws of death

^ Letter to " Pall Mall Gazette," March 24th, 1892.

78 Animals Rights.

and mown down in a peculiarly brutal man-
ner ? . . . A perfect roar of guns fills the air,
louder tap and yell the beaters, above the
din can be heard the heart-rending cries of
wounded hares and rabbits, some of which can
be seen dragging themselves away, with both
hind legs broken, or turning round and round
in their agony before they die. And the
pheasants ! They are on every side, some
rising, some dropping, some lying dead,
but the greater majority fluttering on the
ground wounded, some with both legs broken
and a wing, some with both wings broken and
a leg, others merely winged, running to hide,
others mortally wounded gasping out their
last breath of life amidst the fiendish sounds
which surround them. And this is called
sport ! . . . Sport in every form and kind is
horrible, from the rich man's hare-coursing to
the poor man's rabbit-coursing. All show the
' tiger ' that lives in our natures, and which
nothing but a higher civilisation will eradi-
cate."

CHAPTER VI.

MURDEROUS MILLINERY.

We have seen what a vast amount of quite
preventable suffering is caused through the
agency of the slaughterman, who kills for a
business, and of the sportsman who kills for a
pastime, the victims in either case being re-
garded as mere irrational automata, with no
higher destiny than to satisfy the most arti-
ficial wants or the most cruel caprices of man-
kind. A few words must now be said about
the fur and feather traffic — the slaughter of
mammals and birds for human clothing or
human ornamentation — a subject connected
on the one hand with that of flesh-eating, and
on the other, though to a less degree, with
that of sport. What I shall say will of course
have no reference to wool, or any other sub-
stance which is obtainable without injury to
the animal from which it is taken.

It is evident that in this case, as in the

So Animals Rio-Jits,

i>'

butchering trade, the responsibility for what-
ever wrongs are done must rest ultimately on
the class which demands an unnecessary com-
modity, rather than on that which is compelled
by economic pressure to supply it ; it is not
the man who kills the bird, but the lady who
wears the feathers in her hat, who is the true
offender. But here it will be asked, is the use
of fur and feathers unnecessary? Now of
course if we consider solely the present needs
and tastes of society, in regard to these matters,
it must be admitted that a sudden, unexpected
withdrawal of the numberless animal products
on which our " civilisation " depends would be
a very serious embarrassment ; the world, as
alarmists point out to us, might have to go to
bed without candles, and wake up to find itself
without boots. It must be remembered, how-
ever, that such changes do not come about with
suddenness, but, on the contrary, with the ex-
tremest slowness imaginable ; and a little
thought will suggest, what experience has
already in many cases confirmed, that there is
really no indispensable animal substance for
which a substitute cannot be provided, when
once there is sufficient demand, from the vege-
table or mineral kingdom.

Take the case of leather, for instance, a

Aftcrdcroiis jMilliiicry, 8 1

material which is in ahiiost universal use, and
ma}-, under present circumstances, be fairly
described as a necessar}-. What should we do
without leather? was, in fact, a question very
frequently asked of vegetarians during the
early and callow years of the food-reform
movement, until it was found that vegetable
leather could be successfully employed in boot-
making, and that the inconsistency of which
vegetarians at present stand convicted is only
a temporary and incidental one. Now of
course, so long as oxen are slaughtered for
food, their skins will be utilized in this way ;
but it is not difficult to foresee that the gradual
discontinuance of the habit of flesh-eating will
lead to a similar gradual discontinuance of the
use of hides, and that human ingenuity will
not be at a loss in the provision of a substitute.
So that it does not follow that a commodity
which, in the immediate sense, is necessary
row, would be absolutely or permanently
necessary, under different conditions, in the
future.

My sole reason for dwelling on this typical
point is that I wish to guard myself, by antici-
pation, against a very plausible argument, by
which discredit is often cast on the whole
theory of animals' rights. What can be the

G

82 Animals Rights.

object, it is said, of entering on the senti-
mental path of an impossible humanitarianism,
which only leads into insurmountable difficul-
ties and dilemmas, inasmuch as the use of
these various animal substances is so inter-
woven with the whole system of society that
it can never be discontinued until society
itself comes to an end ? I assert that the
case is by no means so desperate — that it is
easy to make a right beginning now, and to
foresee the lines along which future progress
will be effected. Much that is impossible in
our own time may be realized, by those who
come after us, as the natural and inevitable
outcome of reforms which it now lies with us
to inaugurate.

This said, it may be freely admitted that, at
the outset, humanitarians will do well to draw
a practical distinction between such animal
products as are converted to some genuine
personal use, and those which are supplied
for no better object than to gratify the idle
whims of luxury or fashion. The when and
the wJiere are considerations of the greatest
import in these questions. There is a certain
fitness in the hunter — himself the product of a
rough, wild era in human development — as-
suming the skins of the wild creatures he has

Mttrderoiis Millinery. Zi

conquered ; but it docs not follow because an
Eskimo, for example, may appropriately wear
fur, or a Red Indian feathers, that this apparel
will be equally becoming to the inhabitants of
London or New York ; on the contrary, an
act which is perfectly natural in the one case,
is often a sign of crass vulgarity in the other.
Hercules, clothed triumphant in the spoils of
the Nemean lion, is a subject for painter and
poet ; but what if he had purchased the skin,
ready dressed, from a contemporary manu-
facturer ?

What we must unhesitatingly condemn is
the blind and reckless barbarism which has
ransacked, and is ransacking, whole provinces
and continents, without a glimmer of suspicion
that the innumerable birds and quadrupeds
which it is rapidly exterminating have any
other part or purpose in nature than to be
sacrificed to human vanity, that idle gentle-
men and ladies may bedeck themselves, like
certain characters in the fable, in borrowed
skins and feathers. What care they for all the
beauty and tenderness and intelligence of the
varied forms of animal life ? and what is it to
them whether these be helped forward by man
in the universal progress and evolution of all
living things, or whether whole species be

84 Animals Rights.

transformed and degraded by the way —
boiled down, like the beaver, into a hat, or,
like the seal, into a lady's jacket ? ^

Whatever it may be in other respects, the
fur trade, in so far as it is a supply of orna-
mental clothing for those who are under no
necessity of wearing fur at all, is a barbarous
and stupid business. It makes patch-work,
one may say, not only of the hides of its
victims, but of the conscience and intellect of
its supporters. A fur garment or trimming,
we are told, appearing to the eye as if it were
one uniform piece, is generally made up of
many curiously shaped fragments. It is sig-
nificant that a society which is enamoured of
so many shams and fictions, and which detests
nothing so strongly as the need of looking facts
in the face, should pre-eminently esteem those
articles of apparel which are constructed on
the most deceptive and illusory principle. The
story of the Ass in the Lion's skin is capable,
it seems, of a new and wider application.

^ It is stated of the fur-seal of Alaska {calloj'himis
ursinus) that " there is no known animal, on land or
water, which can take higher physical rank, or which
exhibits a higher order of instinct, closely approaching
human intelligence." — Chainbei's' Jottrnal^ Nov. 27th,
1886.

Murderous i\IiUincry, 85

But if the fur trade gives cause for serious
reflection, what are we to say of the still more
abominable trade in feathers ? Murderous,
indeed, is the millinery which finds its most
fashionable ornament in the dead bodies of
birds — birds, the loveliest and most blithesome
beings in Nature ! There is a pregnant re-
mark made b}- a writer in the " Encyclopaedia
Britannica," that " to enumerate all the feathers
used for ornamental purposes w^ould be prac-
tically to give a complete list of all known and
obtainable birds." The figures and details
published by those humane writers w4io have
raised an unavailing protest against this latest
and worst crime of Fashion are simply appal-
ling in their stern and naked record of unre-
mitting cruelty.

" One dealer in London is said to have re-
ceived as a single consignment 32,000 dead
humming-birds, 80,000 aquatic birds, and
800,000 pairs of wings. A Parisian dealer
had a contract for 40,000 birds, and an army
of murderers were turned out to supply the
order. No less than 40,000 terns have been
sent from Long Island in one season for
millinery purposes. At one auction alone in
London there were sold 404,389 West Indian
and Brazilian bird-skins, and 356,389 East

86 Animals Rights.

Indian, besides thousands of pheasants and
birds-of-paradise." ^ The meaning of such
statistics is simply that the women of Europe
and America have given an order for the ruth-
less extermination of birds.^

It is not seriously contended in any quarter
that this wholesale destruction, effected often
in the most revolting and heartless manner,^
is capable of excuse or justification ; yet the
efforts of those who address themselves to the
better feelings of the offenders appear to meet
with little or no success. The cause of this
failure must undoubtedly be sought in the
general lack of any clear conviction that
animals have rights ; and the evil will never
be thoroughly remedied until not only this
particular abuse, but all such abuses, and the
prime source from which such abuses originate?
have been subjected to an impartial criticism."^

^ Quoted from "As in a Mirror, an Appeal to the
Ladies of England."

^ " You kill a paddy-bird," says an Indian proverb,
" and what do you get ? A handful of feathers." Un-
fortunately commerce has now taught the natives of
India that a handful of feathers is not without its
value.

^ See the publications issued by the Society for the
Protection of Birds, 29, Warwick Road, Maida Vale, W.

■^ It is well that ladies should pledge themselves to

Murderous Millinery. '^']

In saying this I do not of course mean to
imply that special efforts should not be di-
rected against special cruelties. I have already
remarked that the main responsibility for the
daily murders which fashionable millinery is
instigating must lie at the doors of those who
demand, rather than those who supply, these
hideous and funereal ornaments. Unfor-

a rule of not wearing feathers ; but that is an ominous
exception which permits them to wear the feathers of
birds killed for food. It is to such inconsistencies
that an anonymous satirist makes reference in the
following lines :

" When Edwin sat him down to dine one night,
With piteous grief his heart was newly stricken ;

In vain did Angelina him invite,
Grace said, to carve the chicken.

" ' A thousand songsters slaughtered in one day ;

Oh, Angelina, meditate upon it ;
And henceforth never, never wear, I pray,

A redbreast in thy bonnet.'

" Fair Angelina did not scold nor scowl ;

No word she spake, she better knew her lover ;
But from the ample dish of roasted fowl

She gently raised the cover.

" And lo ! the savour of that tender bird
The tender Edwin's appetite did cjuicken.

He started, by a new emotion stirred,
Said grace, and carved the chicken."

88 Animals Rights.

tunately the process, like that of slaughtering
cattle, is throughout delegated to other hands
than those of the ultimate purchaser, so that it
is exceedingly difficult to bring home a due
sense of blood-guiltiness to the right person.

The confirmed sportsman, or amateur
butcher, at least sees with his own eyes the
circumstances attendant on his " sport ; " and
the fact that he feels no compunction in pur-
suing it, is due, in most cases, to an obtuseness
or confusion of the moral faculties. But
many of those who wear seal-skin mantles,
or feather-bedaubed bonnets are naturally
humane enough ; they are misled by pure
ignorance or thoughtlessness, and would at
once abandon such practices if they could be
made aware of the methods employed in the
wholesale massacre of seals or humming-
birds. Still, it remains true that all these
questions ultimately hang together, and that
no complete solution will be found for any
one of them until the whole problem of our
moral relation towards the lower animals is
studied with far greater comprehensiveness.

For this reason it is perhaps unscientific to
assert that any particular form of cruelty to
animals is worse than another form ; the truth
is, that each of these hydra-heads, the off-

MiLrdcrotis Millinery. 89

spring of one parent stem, has its own proper
characteristic, and is different, not worse or
better than the rest. To flesh-eating belongs
the proud distinction of causing a greater bulk
of animal suffering than any other habit what-
soever ; to sport, the meed of unique and
unparalleled brutality ; while the patrons of
murderous millinery afford the most marvel-
lous instance of the capacity the human mind
possesses for ignoring its personal responsi-
bilities. To re-apply Keats's words :

" For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,
And went all naked to the hungry shark ;

For them his ears gush'd blood ; for them in death
The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark

Lay full of darts ; for them alone did seethe
A thousand men in troubles wide and dark ;

Half ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel,

That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel."

CHAPTER VII.

EXPERIMENTAL TORTURE.

Great is the change when we turn from the
easy thoughtless indifferentism of the sports-
man or the milliner to the more determined
and deliberately chosen attitude of the scien-
tist— so great, indeed, that by many people,
even among professed champions of. animals'
rights, it is held impossible to trace such dis-
similar lines of action to one and the same
source. Yet it can be shown, I think, that in
this instance, as in those already examined,
the prime cause of man's injustice to the lower
animals is the belief that they are mere auto-
mata, devoid alike of spirit, character, and
individuality ; only, while the ignorant sports-
man expresses this contempt through the
medium of the battue, and the milliner through
that of the bonnet, the more seriously-minded
physiologist works his work in the " experi-
mental torture " of the laboratory. The diffe-

Experimental Torture. 91

rence lies in the temperament of the men, and
in the tone of their profession ; but in their
denial of the most elementary rights of the
lower races, they are all inspired and instigated
by one common prejudice.

The analytical method employed by modern
science tends ultimately, in the hands of its
most enlightened exponents, to the recognition
of a close relationship between mankind and
the animals ; but incidentally it has exercised
a most sinister effect on the study of the jus
aniinaliiun among the mass of average men.
For consider the dealings of the so-called
naturalist with the animals whose nature he
makes it his business to observe ! In ninety-
nine cases out of a hundred, he is wholly un-
appreciative of the essential distinctive quality,
the individuality, of the subject of his investi-
gations, and becomes nothing more than a
contented accumulator of facts, an industrious
dissector of carcases. " I think the most im-
portant requisite in describing an animal,"
says Thoreau, " is to be sure that you give its
character and spirit, for in that you have,
without error, the sum and effect of all its
parts known and unknown. Surely the most
important part of an animal is its aniina, its
vital spirit, on which is based its character and

92 Animals Rights.

all the particulars by which it most concerns
us. Yet most scientific books which treat of
animals leave this out altogether, and what
they describe are, as it were, phenomena of
dead matter."

The whole system of our " natural history "
as practised at the present time, is based on
this deplorably partial and misleading method.
Does a rare bird alight on our shores ? It is at
once slaughtered by some enterprising col-
lector, and proudly handed over to the nearest
taxidermist, that it may be " preserved," among
a number of other stuffed corpses, in the local
" Museum." It is a dismal business at best,
this science of the fowling-piece and the dis-
secting-knife, but it is in keeping" with the
materialistic tendency of a certain school of
thought, and only a few of its professors rise
out of it, and above it, to a maturer and more
far-sighted understanding. " The child," says
Michelet, "disports himself, shatters, and de-
stroys ; he finds his happiness in undoing.
And science, in its childhood, does the same.
It cannot study unless it kills. The sole use
which it makes of a living mind is, in the first
place, to dissect it. None carry into scientific
pursuits that tender reverence for life which Na-
ture rewards by unveiling to us her mysteries."

Expeidmeutal Tortiti^e. 93

Under these circumstances, it is scarcely to
be wondered at that modern scientists, their
minds athirst for further and further oppor-
tunities of satisfying this analytical curiosity,
should desire to have recourse to the experi-
mental torture which is euphemistically de-
scribed as " vivisection." They are caught and
impelled by the overmastering passion of
knowledge ; and, as a handy subject for the
gratification of this passion, they see before
them the helpless race of animals, in part wild,
in part domesticated, but alike regarded by
the generality of mankind as incapable of
possessing any " rights." They are practically
accustomed (despite their ostensible disavowal
of the Cartesian theory) to treat these animals
as automata — things made to be killed and
dissected and catalogued for the advancement
of knowledge ; they are, moreover, in their
professional capacity, the lineal descendants of
a class of men who, however kindly and con-
siderate in other respects, have never scrupled
to subordinate the strongest promptings of
humaneness to the least of the supposed inte-
rests of science.^ Given these conditions, it

^ Vivisection is an ancient usage, having been prac-
tised for 2,000 years or more, in Egypt, Italy, and
elsewhere. Human vivisection is mentioned by Galen

94 Ani7Jials Rights.

seems as inevitable that the physiologist should
vivisect as that the country gentleman should
shoot. Experimental torture is as appro-
priately the study of the half-enlightened man
as sport is the amusement of the half-witted.

But the fact that vivisection is not, as some
of its opponents would appear to regard it, a
portentous, unaccountable phenomenon, but
rather the logical outcome of a certain ill-
balanced habit of mind, does not in any way
detract from its intellectual and moral loath-
someness. It is idle to spend a single moment
in advocating the rights of the lower animals,
if such rights do not include a total and un-
qualified exemption from the awful tortures of
vivisection — from the doom of being slowly

as liaving been fashionable for centuries before his
day, and Celsus informs us that " they procured crimi-
nals out of prison, and, dissecting them alive, contem-
plated, while they were yet breathing, what nature had
before concealed." The sorcerers, too, of the Middle
Ages tortured both human beings and animals, with a
view to the discovery of their medicinal elixirs. The
recognition of the rights of men has now made human
vivisection criminal, and the scientific inquisition of
the present time counts animals alone as its victims.
And here the Act of 1876 has fortunately, though not
sufficiently, restricted the powers of the vivisector in
this country.

Experimental Tor litre. 95

and mercilessly dismembered, or flayed, or
baked alive, or infected with some deadly
virus, or subjected to any of the numerous
modes of torture inflicted by the Scientific
Inquisition. Let us heartily endorse the words
of Miss Cobbe on this crucial subject, that
" the minimuin of all possible rights plainly is
— to be spared the worst of all possible wrongs ;
and if a horse or dog have no claim to be
spared from being maddened and mangled
after the fashion of Pasteur and Chauveau,
then it is impossible it can have any right at
all, or that any offence against it, by gentle or
simple, can deserve punishment."

It is necessary to speak strongly and un-
mistakably on this point, because, as I have
already said, there is a disposition on the part
of some of the " friends of animals " to palter
and compromise with vivisection, as if the
alleged " utility " of its practices, or the " con-
scientious " motives of its professors, put it on
an altogether different footing from other
kinds of inhumanity. " Much against my
own feelings," wrote one of these backsliders,^
" I do see a warrant for vivisection in the case
of harmful animals, and animals which are

1 "The Rights of an Animal," by E. B. Nicholson,
1879.

96 Animals Rights.

man's rivals for food. If an animal is doomed
to be killed on other grounds, the vivisector,
when its time comes, may step in, buy it, kill
it in his own way, and take without self-re-
proach the gain to knowledge which he can
get from its death. And my ' sweet is life '
theory would further allow of animals being
specially bred for vivisection — where and where
only they would otherwise not have been bred
at all." This astounding argument, which as-
sumes the necessity of vivisection, gives away,
it will be observed, the whole case of animals'
rights.

The assertion, commonly made by the
apologists of the Scientific Inquisition, that
vivisection is justified by its utility — that it is,
in fact, indispensable to the advance of know-
ledge and civilization ^ — is founded on a mere

^ The medical argument of " utility " has always
been held in terroi'em over the unscientific assertion
of animals' rights. Porphyry, writing in the third
century, quotes the following from Claudius the Nea-
politan, author of a treatise against abstinence from
animal food. " How many will be prevented from
having their diseases cured, if animals are abstained
from ! For we see that those who are blind recover
their sight by eating a viper." Some of the results
that scientists "see" nowadays may appear equally
strange to posterity !

Experimental Tortitre. 97

half-view of the position ; the scientist, as I
have alread}' remarked, is a half-enHghtened
man. Let us assume (a large assumption, cer-
tainly, controverted as it is by some most
weighty medical testimony) that the progress
of surgical science is assisted by the experi-
ments of the vivisector. What then ? Before
rushing to the conclusion that vivisection is
justifiable on that account, a wise man will
take into full consideration the other, the moral
side of the question — the hideous injustice of
torturing an innocent animal, and the terrible
wrong thereby done to the humane sense of
the community.

The wise scientist and the wise humanist
are identical. A true science cannot possibly
ignore the solid incontrovertible fact, that the
practice of vivisection is revolting to the human
conscience, even among the ordinary members
of a not over-sensitive society. The so-called
"science" (we are compelled unfortunately, in
common parlance, to use the word in this
specialized technical meaning) which delibe-
rately overlooks this fact, and confines its view
to the material aspects of the problem, is not
science at all, but a one-sided assertion of the
views which find favour with a particular class
of men.

H

g8 Animals Rights.

Nothing is necessary which is abhorrent,
revolting, intolerable, to the general instincts
of humanity. Better a thousand times that
science should forego or postpone the ques-
tionable advantage of certain problematical
discoveries, than that the moral conscience of
the community should be unmistakably out-
raged by the confusion of right and wrong.
The short cut is not always the right path ;
and to perpetrate a cruel injustice on the lower
animals, and then attempt to excuse it on the
ground that it will benefit posterity, is an
argument which is as irrelevant as it is im-
moral. Ingenious it may be (in the way of
hoodwinking the unwary) but it is certainly in
no true sense scientific. *

If there be one bright spot, one refreshing
oasis, in the discussion of this dreary subject,
it is the humorous recurrence of the old thread-
bare fallacy of " better for the animals them-
selves." Yes, even here, in the laboratory of
the vivisector, amidst the baking and sawing
and dissection, we are sometimes met by that
familiar friend — the proud plea of a single-
hearted regard for the interests of the suffering
animals ! Who knows but what some benefi-
cent experimentalist, if only he be permitted
to cut up a sufficient number of victims, may

Experimental Torture. gg

discover some potent remedy for all the
lamented ills of the animal as well as of the
human creation ? Can we doubt that the
victims themselves, if once they could realize
the noble object of their martyrdom, would
vie with each other in rushing eagerly on the
knife ? The only marvel is that, where the
cause is so meritorious, no Jmnian volunteer
has as yet come forward to die under the hands
of the vivisector 1 ^

It is fully admitted that experiments on men
would be far more valuable and conclusive than
experiments on animals ; yet scientists usually
disavow any wish to revive these practices, and
indignantly deny the rumours, occasionally
circulated, that the poorer patients in hospitals
are the subjects of such anatomical curiosity.
Now here, it will be observed, in the case of
men, the 7;^(9r<^/ aspect of vivisection is admitted
by the scientist as a matter of course, yet in
the case of animals it is allowed no weight

• It is true, however, that Lord Aberdare, in pre-
siding over the last annual meeting of the Royal
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and
in warning the society against entering on an anti-
vivisection crusade, gave utterance to the delightfully
comical remark that he had himself been thrice ope-
rated on, and was all the better for it I

lOO Animals Rights.

whatever ! How can this strange inconsistency
be justified, unless on the assumption that
men have rights, but animals have no rights —
in other words, that animals are mere things^
possessed of no purpose, and no claim on the
justice and forbearance of the community?

One of the most notable and ominous
features in the apologies offered for vivisection
is the assertion, so commonly made by scien-
tific writers, that it is " no worse " than certain
kindred practices. When the upholders of
any accused institution begin to plead that it
is " no worse " than other institutions, we may
feel quite assured that the case is a very bad
one indeed — it is the drowning man catching
at the last straw and shred of argument.
Thus the advocates of experimental torture
are reduced to the expedient of laying stress
on the cruelties of the butcher and the herds-
man, and inquiring why, if pole-axing and
castration are permissible, vivisection may not
also be permitted.^ Sport, also, is a practice
which has greatly shocked the susceptibilities
of the humane vivisector. A writer in the
"Fortnightly Review" has defined sport as

^ See J. Cotter Morrison's article on " Scientific
versus Bucolic Vivisection," " Fortnightly Review,"
1885.

Experimental Torture. loi

" the love of the clever destruction of living
things," and has calculated that three millions
of animals are yearly mangled by English
sportsmen, in addition to those killed outright."^
Now if the attack on vivisection emanated
primarily or wholly from the apologists of the
sportsman and slaughterer, this tu quoque of
the scientist's must be allowed to be a smart,
though rather flippant, retort ; but when all
cruelty is arraigned as inhuman and unjustifi-
able, an evasive answer of this kind ceases to
have any relevancy or pertinence. Let us
admit, however, that, in contrast with the
childish brutality of the sportsman, the un-
doubted seriousness and conscientiousness of
the vivisector (for I do not question that he acts
from conscientious motives) may be counted to
his advantage. But then we have to remember,
on the other hand, that the conscientious man,
when he goes wrong, is far more dangerous to
society than the knave or the fool ; indeed,
the special horror of vivisection consists pre-
cisely in this fact, that it is not due to mere
thoughtlessness and ignorance, but represents
a deliberate, avowed, conscientious invasion of
the very principle of animals' rights.

I have already said that it is idle to specu-
^ Professor Jevons, "Fortnightly Review," 1876.

102 Animals Rights.

late which is the worst form of cruelty to
animals, for certainly in this subject, if any-
where, we must " reject the lore of nicely
calculated less or more." Vivisection, if there
be any truth at all in the principle for which I
am contending, is not the root, but the fine
flower and consummation of barbarity and in-
justice— the ne plus ultra of iniquity in man's
dealings w^ith the lower races. The root of
the evil lies, as I have throughout asserted, in
that detestable assumption (detestable equally
whether it be based on pseudo-religious or
pseudo-scientific grounds) that there is a gulf,
an impassable barrier, between man and the
animals, and that the moral instincts of com-
passion, justice, and love, are to be as sedu-
lously repressed and thwarted in the one
direction as they are to be fostered and
extended in the other.

For this very reason our crusade against the
Scientific Inquisition, to be thorough and suc-
cessful, must be founded on the rock of con-
sistent opposition to cruelty in every form and
phase ; it is useless to denounce vivisection
as the source of all inhumanities, and, while
demanding its immediate suppression, to sup-
pose that other minor questions may be in-
definitely postponed. It is true that the actual

Expe7'imental Torture. 103

emancipation of the lower races, as of the
human, can only proceed step by step, and
that it is both natural and politic to strike
first at what is most repulsive to the public
conscience. I am not depreciating the wisdom
of such a concentration of effort on any par-
ticular point, but warning my readers against
the too common tendency to forget the gene-
ral principle that underlies each individual
protest.

The spirit in which we approach these
matters should be a liberal and far-seeing one.
Those who work for the abolition of vivisection,
or any other particular wrong, should do so
with the avowed purpose of capturing one
stronghold of the enemy, not because they
believe that the war will then be over, but
because they will be able to use the position
thus gained as an advantageous starting-point
for still further progression.

CHAPTER VIII.

LINES OF REFORM.

Having now applied the principle with which
we started to the several cases where it appears
to be most flagrantly overlooked, we are in a
better position to estimate the difficulties and
the possibilities of its future acceptance. Our
investigation of animals' rights has necessarily
been, in large measure, an enumeration of
animals' wrongs, a story of cruelty and injustice
which might have been unfolded in far greater
and more impressive detail, had there been any
reason for here repeating what has been else-
where established by other writers beyond
doubt or dispute.

But my main purpose was to deal with a
general theory rather than with particular
instances ; and enough has already been said
to show that while man has much cause to be
grateful to the lower animals for the innumer-
able services rendered by them, he can hardly

Lines of Refoiin, 105

pride himself on the record of the counter-
benefits which they have received at his hands.
" If we consider," says Primatt, "the excruciat-
ing injuries offered on our part to the brutes,
and the patience on their part ; how frequent
our provocation, and how seldom tJieir resent-
ment (and in some cases our weakness and
tJieir strength, our slowness and //^^2> swiftness)
one would be almost tempted to suppose that
the brutes had combined in one general scheme
of benevolence, to teach mankind lessons of
mercy and meekness by their own forbearance
and longsuffering."

It is unwise, no doubt, to dwell too ex-
clusively on the wrongs of which animals are
the victims ; it is still more unwise to ignore
them as they are to-day ignored by the large
majority of mankind. It is full time that this
question were examined in the light of some
rational and guiding principle, and that we
ceased to drift helplessly between the extremes
of total indifference on the one hand, and
spasmodic, partially-applied compassion on
the other. We have had enough, and too
much, of trifling with this or that isolated
aspect of the subject, and of playing off the
exposure of somebody else's insensibility by
way of a balance for our own, as if a tu quoque

io6 Animals Rights,

^y

were a sufficient justification of a man's moral
delinquencies.

The terrible sufferings that are quite need-
lessly inflicted on the lower animals under the
plea of domestic usage, food-demands, sport,
fashion, and science, are patent to all who have
the seeing eye and the feeling heart to appre-
hend them ; those sufferings will not be
lessened, nor will man's responsibility be
diminished by any such irrelevant assertions
as that vivisection is less cruel than sport, or
sport less cruel than butchering, — nor yet by
the contrary contention that vivisection, or
sport, or flesh-eating, as the case may be, is
the one prime origin of all human inhumanity.
We want a comprehensive principle which will
coverall these varying instances, and determine
the true lines of reform.

Such a principle, as I have throughout in-
sisted, can only be found in the recognition of
the right of animals, as of men, to be exempt
from any unnecessary suffering or serfdom, the
right to live a natural life of " restricted free-
dom," subject to the real, not supposed or
pretended, requirements of the general com-
munity. It may be said, and with truth, that
the perilous vagueness of the word "necessary"
must leave a convenient loop-hole of escape to

Lines of Reform. 107

anyone who wishes to justify his own treat-
ment of animals, however unjustifiable that
treatment may appear ; the vivisector will
assert that his practice is necessary in the
interests of science, the flesh-eater that he
cannot maintain his health without animal
food, and so on through the whole category of
systematic oppression.

The difficulty is an inevitable one. No
form of words can be devised for the expres-
sion of rights, human or animal, which is not
liable to some sort of evasion ; and all that
can be done is to fix the responsibility of
deciding between what is necessary and unne-
cessary, between factitious personal wants and
genuine social demands, on those in whom is
vested the power of exacting the service or
sacrifice required. The appeal being thus
made, and the issue thus stated, it may be
confidently trusted that the personal conscience
of individuals and the public conscience of the
nation, acting and reacting in turn on each
other, will slowly and surely work out the only
possible solution of this difficult and many-
sided problem.

For that the difficulties involved in this
animal question are many and serious, no
one, I imagine, would dispute, and certainly

io8 Animals Rights.

no attempt has been made or will be made,
in this essay to minimise or deny them/ It
may suit the purpose of those who would
retard all humanitarian progress to represent
its advocates as mere dreamers and senti-
mentalists— men and women who befool them-
selves by shutting their eyes to the fierce
struggle that is everywhere being waged in the
world of nature, while they point with virtuous
indignation to the iniquities perpetrated by
man. But it is possible to be quite free from
any such sentimental illusions, and yet to hold
a very firm belief in the principle of animals'
rights. We do not deny, or attempt to ex-
plain away, the existence of evil in jiature, or
the fact that the life of the lower races, as of
mankind, is based to a large degree on rapine
and violence ; nor can we pretend to say
whether this evil will ever be wholly amended.
It is therefore confessedly impossible, at the
present time, to formulate an entirely and
logically consistent philosophy of rights ; but
that would be a poor argument against grap-
pling with the subject at all.

The hard unmistakable facts of the situation,
when viewed in their entirety, are not by any
means calculated to inspire with confidence the
* See p. 22.

Lines of Refo7nii. 109

opponents of humane reform. For, if it be true
that internecine competition is a great factor
in the economy of nature, it is no less true, as
has been already pointed out,^ that co-operation
is also a great factor therein. Furthermore,
though there are many difficulties besetting
the onward path of humanitarianism, an even
greater difficulty has to be faced by those who
refuse to proceed along that path, viz., the fact
— as strong a fact as any that can be produced
on the other side — that the instinct of com-
passion and justice to* the lower animals has
already been so largely developed in the human
conscience as to obtain legislative recognition.
If the theory of animals' rights is a mere
idealistic phantasy, it follows that we have
long ago committed ourselves to a track which
can lead us no whither. Is it then proposed
that we should retrace our steps, with a view
to regaining the antique position of savage
and consistent callousness ; or are we to
remain perpetually in our present meaningless
attitude, admitting the moral value of a par-
tially awakened sensibility, yet opposing an
eternal non possumus to any further improve-
ment ? Neither of these alternatives is for a
moment conceivable ; it is perfectly certain
^ See p. 26.

no Animals Rights.

that there will still be a forward movement,
and along the same lines as in the past.

Nor need we be at all disconcerted by the
derisive enquiries of our antagonists as to the
final outcome of such theories. "There is
some reason to hope," said the author of the
ironical "Vindication of the Rights of Brutes,"
" that this essay will soon be followed by trea-
tises on the rights of vegetables and minerals,
and that thus the doctrine of perfect equality
will become universal." To which suggestion
we need only answer, "Perhaps." It is for each
age to initiate its own ethical reforms, accord-
ing to the light and sensibility of its own
instincts ; further and more abstruse questions,
at present insoluble, may safely be left to the
more mature judgment of posterity. The
human conscience furnishes the safest and
simplest indicator in these matters. We know
that certain acts of injustice affect us as they
did not affect our forefathers — it is our duty to
set these right. It is not our duty to agitate
problems, which, at the present date, excite no
unmistakable moral feeling.

The humane instinct will assuredly continue
to develope. And it should be observed that
to advocate the rights of animals is far more
than to plead for compassion or justice to-

Lhics of Reforin, \ \ \

wards the victims of ill-usage ; it is not only,
and not primarily, for the sake of the victims
that we plead, but for the sake of mankind it-
self. Our true civilisation, our race-progress,
our Jiuinanity (in the best sense of the term)
are concerned in this development ; it is our-
selves, our own vital instincts, that we wrong,
when we trample on the rights of the fellow-
beings, human or animal, over whom we
chance to hold jurisdiction. It has been ad-
mirably said ^ that, " terrible as is the lot of the
subjects of cruelty and injustice, that of the
perpetrators is even worse, by reason of the
debasement and degradation of character im-
plied and incurred. For the principles of Hu-
manity cannot be renounced with impunity ;
but their renunciation, if persisted in, involves
inevitably the forfeiture of Humanity itself.
And to cease through such forfeiture to be
man is to become demon."

This most important point is constantly
overlooked by the opponents of humanitarian
reform. They labour, unsuccesssfully enough,
to minimise the complaints of animals' wrongs,
on the plea that these wrongs, though great,
are not so great as they are represented to be,

^ Edward Maitland ; Address to the Humanitarian
League.

112 Animals Rip'hts.

s

and that in any case It is not possible, or not
urgently desirable, for man to alleviate them.
As if Jiuinan interests also were not intimately
bound up in every such compassionate endea-
vour ! The case against injustice to animals
stands, in this respect, on exactly the same
grounds as that against injustice to man, and
may be illustrated by some suggestive words
of De Quincey's on the typical subject of cor-
poral punishment. This practice, he remarks,
" is usually argued with a single reference to
the case of him who suffers it ; and so argued,
God knows that it is worthy of all abhorrence :
but the weightiest argument against it is the
foul indignity which is offered to our common
nature lodged in the person of him on whom
it is inflicted."

And this brings us back to the moral of the
whole matter. The idea of Humanity is no
longer confined to man ; it is beginning to
extend itself to the lower animals, as in the
past it has been gradually extended to savages
and slaves. " Behold the animals. There is
not one but the human soul lurks within it,
fulfilling its destiny as surely as within you."
So writes the author of " Towards Demo-
cracy ; " and what has long been felt by the
poet is now being scientifically corroborated

Lines of Reform. 1 1 3

by the anthropologist and philosopher. " The
standpoint of modern thought," says Biichner/
" no longer recognises in animals a difference
of kind, but only a difference of degree, and
sees the principle of intelligence developing
through an endless and unbroken series."

It is noteworthy that, on this point, evolu-
tionary science finds itself in agreement with
oriental tradition. " The doctrine of metem-
psychosis," says Strauss,^ "knits men and beasts
together here [in the East], and unites the
whole of Nature in one sacred and mysterious
bond. The breach between the two was
opened in the first place by Judaism, with its
hatred of the Gods of Nature, next by the
dualism of Christianity. It is remarkable that
at present a deeper sympathy with the animal
world should have arisen among the more civi-
lized nations, which manifests itself here and
there in societies for the prevention of cruelty
to animals. It is thus apparent that what on
the one hand is the product of modern science
— the giving up of the spiritualistic isolation of
man from Nature — reveals itself simultaneously
through the channel of popular sentiment."

* " Mind in Animals," translated by Annie Besant.
2 "The Old Faith and the New," translated by
Mathilde Blind.

114 Animals Rights.

It is not human life only that is lovable and
sacred, but all innocent and beautiful life : the
great republic of the future will not confine its
beneficence to man. The isolation of man from
Nature, by our persistent culture of the ratio-
cinative faculty, and our persistent neglect of
the instinctive, has hitherto been the penalty we
have had to pay for our incomplete and partial
" civilization ; " there are many signs that the
tendency will now be towards that " Return
to Nature " of which Rousseau was the pro-
phet. But let it not for a moment be sup-
posed that an acceptance of the gospel of
Nature implies an abandonment or deprecia-
tion of intellect — on the contrary, it is the
assertion that reason itself can never be at its
best, can never be truly rational, except when
it is in perfect harmony with the deep-seated
emotional instincts and sympathies which
underlie all thought.

The true scientist and humanist is he who
will reconcile brain to heart, and show us how,
without any sacrifice of what we have gained
in knowledge, we may resume what we
have temporarily lost during the process of
acquiring that knowledge — the sureness of in-
tuitive faculty which is originally implanted in
men and animals alike. Only by this return

Lines of Reform. 1 1 5

to the common fount of feeling will it be
possible for man to place himself in right rela-
tionship towards the lower animals, and to
break down the fatal barrier of antipathy that
he has himself erected. If we contrast the
mental and moral attitude of the generality of
mankind towards the lower races with that of
such men as St. Francis or Thoreau, we see
what far-reaching possibilities still lie before
us on this line of development, and what an
immense extension is even now waiting to be
given to our most advanced ideas of social
unity and brotherhood.

I have already remarked on the frequent
and not altogether unjustifiable complaint
against " lovers of animals," that they are
often indifferent to the struggle for human
rights, while they concern themselves so eagerly
over the interests of the lower races. Equally
true is the converse statement, that many
earnest reformers and philanthropists, men
who have a genuine passion for human liberty
and progress, are coldly sceptical or even
bitterly hostile on the subject of the rights of
animals. This organic limitation of sympa-
thies must be recognised and regretted, but it
is worse than useless for the one class of re-
formers to indulge in blame or recrimination

ii6 Anhnals RipJits.

<b

against the other. It is certain that they are
both working towards the same ultimate end ;
and if they cannot actually co-operate, they
may at least refrain from unnecessarily thwart-
ing and opposing each other.

The principles of justice, if they are to make
solid and permanent headway, must be ap-
plied with thoroughness and consistency. If
there are rights of animals, there must a for-
tiori be rights of men ; and, as I have shown,
it is impossible to maintain that an admission
of human rights does not involve an admission
of animals' rights also. Now it may not al-
ways fall to the lot of the same persons to
advocate both kinds of rights, but these rights
are, nevertheless, being simultaneously and
concurrently advocated ; and those who are in
a position to take a clear and wide survey of
the whole humanitarian movement are aware
that its final success is dependent on this
broad onward tendency. " Man will not be
truly man," says Michelet, "until he shall
labour seriously for that which the earth ex-
pects from him — the pacification and har-
monious union of all living Nature."

The advent of democracy, imperfect though
any democracy must be which does not em-
brace all living things within its scope, will be

Lines of Reform. 1 1 7

of enormous assistance to the cause of animals'
rights, for under the present unequal and in-
equitable social system there is no possibility
of those claims receiving their due share of
attention. In the rush and hurry of a com-
petitive society, where commercial profit is
avowed to be the main object of work, and
where the well-being of men and women is
ruthlessly sacrificed to that object, what like-
lihood is there that the lower animals will not
be used with a sole regard to the same pre-
dominant purpose ? Humane individuals may
here and there protest, and the growing con-
science of the public may express itself in
legislation against the worst forms of pal-
pable ill-usage, but the bulk of the people
simply cannot, and will not, afford to treat
animals as they ought to be treated. Do the
wealthy classes show any such consideration ?
Let " amateur butchery " and " murderous
millinery " be the answer. Can it be wondered,
then, that the '' lower classes," whose own
rights are existent far more in theory than in
fact, should exhibit a feeling of stolid indif-
ference to the rights of the still lower animals ?
It has been said that, "If in a mob of Lon-
doners, Parisians, New Yorkers, Berliners,
Melbourners, a dove fluttered down to seek a

ii8 Animals RiorJits

<b

refuge, a hundred dirty hands would be
stretched out to seize it, and wring its neck ;
and if anyone tried to save and cherish it, he
would be rudely bonneted, and mocked, and
hustled amidst the brutal guffaws of roughs,
lower and more hideous in aspect and in nature
than any animal which lives." ^ This may
be so ; yet it must be remembered that it is
not the people, but the lords, who have hitherto
prevented the suppression, in England at any
rate, of the infamous pastime of pigeon-
shooting. It is to the democracy, and the
democratic sense of kinship and brotherhood,
extending first to mankind, and then to the
lower races, that we must look for future
progress. The emancipation of men will bring
with it another and still wider emancipation —
of animals.

In conclusion, we are brought face to face
with this practical problem — by what imme-
diate means can we best provide for the
attainment of the end we have in view? What
are the surest remedies for the present wrongs,
and the surest pledges for the future rights, of
the victims of human supremacy? The answer,
I think, must be that there are two pre-emi-
nently important methods which are some-
' Ouida, "Fortnightly Review," April, 1892.

Lines of Reform. 119

times regarded as contradictory in principle,
but which, as I hope to show, are not only
quite compatible, but even mutually service-
able and to some degree inter-dependent. We
have no choice but to work by one or the
other of these methods, and, if we are wise, we
shall endeavour to work by both simul-
taneously, using the first as our chief instru-
ment of reform, the second as an auxiliary
and supplementary instrument. The two
methods to which I allude are the educational
and the legislative.

I. Education, in the largest sense of the
term, has always been, and must always
remain, the antecedent and indispensable con-
dition of humanitarian progress. Very ex-
cellent are the words of John Bright on the
subject (let us forget for the nonce that he was
an angler). " Humanity to animals is a great
point. If I were a teacher in a school, I
would make it a very important part of my
business to impress every boy and girl with
the duty of his or her being kind to all animals.
It is impossible to say how much suffering
there is in the world from the barbarity or
unkindness which people show to what we
call the inferior creatures."

It may be doubted, however, whether the

I20 Animals Rights,

young will ever be specially impressed with
the lesson of humanity as long as the general
tone of their elders and instructors is one of
cynical indifference, if not of absolute hostility,
to the recognition of animals' rights/ It is
society as a whole, and not one class in par-
ticular, that needs enlightenment and remon-
strance; in fact, the very conception and scope
of what is known as a " liberal education "
must be revolutionized and extended. For if
we find fault with the narrow and unscientific
spirit of what is known as " science," we must
in fairness admit that our academic " humani-
ties," the litercB humaniores of colleges and
schools, together with much of our modern
culture and refinement, are scarcely less defi-
cient in that quickening spirit of sympathetic
brotherhood, without which all the accomplish-
ments that the mind of man can devise are as
the borrowed cloak of an imperfectly realized
civilization, assumed by some barbarous tribe
but half emerged from savagery. This divorce
of " humanism " from humaneness is one of

^ " They tell children, perhaps, that they must not
be cruel to animals .... what avails all the fine talk
about morality, in contrast with acts of barbarism and
inmiorality presented to them on all sides ? " — GUSTAV
VON Struve.

Lines of Reform. 121

the subtlest dangers by which society is beset ;
for, if we grant that love needs to be tempered
and directed by wisdom, still more needful is
it that wisdom should be informed and vita-
lized by love.

It is therefore not only our children who
need to be educated in the proper treatment
of animals, but our scientists, our religionists,
our moralists, and our men of letters. For in
spite of the vast progress of humanitarian
ideas during the present century, it must be
confessed that the popular exponents of
western thought ' are still for the most part
quite unable to appreciate the profound truth
of those words of Rousseau, which should
form the basis of an enlightened system of

^ Eastern thought has always been far humaner
than western, however deplorably in the East also
practice may lag behind profession. In an interesting
book lately published ('' Man and Beast in India," by
J. Lockwood Kipling), an extremely unfavourable ac-
count is given of the Hindoo treatment of animals.
The alleged kindness of the natives, says the author,
is nothing better than "a vague reluctance to take
life by a sudden positive act," and " does not preserve
the ox, the horse, and the ass from being unmercifully
beaten, over-driven, over-laden, under-fed, and worked
with sores under their harness." But he admits that
"a more humane temper prevails with regard to free
creatures than in the west."

122 Anijuals Rio^hts.

«b

instruction: " Hommes, soyez humains ! C'est
votre premier devoir. Quelle sagesse y a-t-il
pour vous, hors de I'humanite ? "

But how is this vast educational change to
be inaugurated — let alone accomplished ? Like
all far-reaching reforms which are promoted
by a few believers in the face of the public
indifferentism, it can only be carried through
by the energy and resolution of its supporters.
The efforts which the various humane societies
are now making in special directions, each
concentrating its attack on a particular abuse,
must be supplemented and strengthened by a
crusade — an intellectual, literary, and social
crusade — against the central causeof oppres-
sion, viz. V the disregard of the natural kinship
between man and the animals, and the con-
sequent denial of their rights. We must
insist on having the whole question fully con-
sidered and candidly discussed, and must no
longer permit its most important issues to be
shirked because it does not suit the convenience
or the prejudices of comfortable folk to give
attention to them.

Above all, the sense of ridicule that at
present attaches to the supposed " sentimenta-
lism " of an advocacy of animals' rights must
be faced and swept away. The fear of this

Lines of Reform. i 2 3

absurd charge deprives the cause of humanity
of many workers who would otherwise lend
their aid, and accounts in part for the unduly
diffident and apologetic tone which is too often
adopted by humanitarians. We must meet
this ridicule, and retort it without hesitation
on those to \\hom it properly pertains. The
laugh must be turned against the true "cranks"
and "crotchet-mongers " — the noodles who can
give no wiser reason for the infliction of
suffering on animals than that it is " better for
the animals themselves" — the flesh-eaters who
labour under the pious belief that animals
were " sent " us as food — the silly women who
imagine that the corpse of a bird is a becoming
article of head-gear — the half-witted sportsmen
who vow that the vigour of the English race
is dependent on the practice of fox-hunting —
and the half-enlightened scientists who are
unaware that vivisection has moral and spiri-
tual, no less than physical, consequences. That
many of our arguments are mere superficial
sword-play, and do not touch the profound
emotional sympathies on which the cause of
humanity rests, is a fact which does not lessen
their controversial significance. For this is a
case where those who take the sword shall
perish by the sword ; and the clever men -of-

1 24 Animals Rights.

the-world who twit consistent humanitarians
with sickly sentimentaHty may perhaps dis-
cover that they themselves — fixed as they are
in an ambiguous and utterly untenable posi-
tion— are the sickliest sentimentalists of all.

II. Legislation, where the protection of
harmless animals is concerned, is the fit sup-
plement and sequel to education, and the ob-
jections urged against it are for the most part
unreasonable. It must inevitably fail in its
purpose, say some ; for how can the mere
passing of a penal statute prevent the in-
numerable unwitnessed acts of cruelty and
oppression which make up the great total of
animal suffering? But the purpose of legis-
lation is not merely thus preventive. Legisla-
tion is the record, the register, of the moral
sense of the community ; it follows, not pre-
cedes, the development of that moral sense,
but nevertheless in its turn reacts on it,
strengthens it, and secures it against the
danger of retrocession. It is well that society
should proclaim, formally and decisively, its
abhorrence of certain practices ; and I do not
think it can be doubted, by those who have
studied the history of the movement, that the
general treatment of domestic animals in this
country, bad as it still is, would be infinitely

Lines of Reform. 125

worse at this day but for the progressive and
punitive legislation that dates from the passing
of " Martin's Act " in 1822.

The further argument, so commonly ad-
vanced, that " force is no remedy," and that it
is better to trust to the good feeling of man-
kind than to impose a legal restriction, is an
amiable criticism which might doubtless be
applied with great effect to a large majority of
our existing penal enactments, but it is not
very applicable to the case under discussion.
For if force is ever allowable, surely it is so when
it is applied for a strictly defensive purpose, such
as to safeguard the weak and helpless from
violence and aggression. The protection of
animals by statute marks but another step on-
ward in that course of humanitarian legislation
which, among numerous triumphs, has abo-
lished slavery and passed the Factory Acts —
always in the teeth of this same time-honoured
but irrelevant objection that " force is no
remedy." Equally fatuous is the assertion
that the administrators of the law cannot be
trusted to adjudicate between master and
" beast." It was long ago stated by Lord Ers-
kine that "to distinguish the severest discipline,
for enforcing activity and commanding obe-
dience in such dependents, from brutal ferocity

126 Animals Rizhts.

cb'

and cruelty, never yet puzzled a judge or jury
— never, at least, in my long experience."

Such arguments against the legal protection
of animals were admirably refuted by John
Stuart Mill. " The reasons for legal inter-
vention in favour of children," he said, " apply
not less strongly to the case of those unfortu-
nate slaves and victims of the most brutal part
of mankind, the lower animals. It is by the
grossest misunderstanding of the principles of
Liberty that the infliction of exemplary
punishment on ruffianism practised towards
these defenceless beings has been treated as a
meddling by Government with things beyond
its province — an interference with domestic
life. The domestic life of domestic tyrants is
one of the things which it is most imperative
on the Law to interfere with. And it is to be
regretted that metaphysical scruples respecting
the nature and source of the authority of
governments should induce many warm sup-
porters of laws against cruelty to the lower
animals to seek for justification of such laws
in the incidental consequences of the indul-
gence of ferocious habits to the interest of
human beings, rather than in the intrinsic
merits of the thing itself What it would be
the duty of a human being, possessed of the

L incs of Reform. 1 2 7

requisite physical strength, to prevent by force,
if attempted in his presence, it cannot be less
incumbent on society generally to repress.
The existing laws of England are chiefly
defective in the trifling — often almost nominal
— maximum to which the penalty, even in the
worst cases, is limited." ^

Let us turn now to the practical politics of
the question, and consider in what instances
we may suitably appeal for further legislative
recognition of the rights of animals. Admit-
ting that education must always precede law,
and that we can only make penal those
offences which are already condemned by the
better feeling of the nation, we are still bound
to point out that in several particulars there is
now urgent need of bringing the lagging in-
fluence of the legislature into a line with a
rapidly advancing public opinion. It is possible
that, in some cases, certain prevalent cruelties
might be suppressed, without any change in
the law, by magistrates and juries giving a
wider interpretation to the rather vague word-
ing of the existing statutes. If this cannot
be done, the statutes themselves should be
amended, so as to meet the larger require-

^ " Principles of Political Economy."

128 Animals Rights.

ments of a more enlightened national con-
science.

There are not a few cruel practices, in
common vogue at the present day, which are
every whit as strongly condemned by thinking
people as were bull-baiting and cock-fighting
at the time of their prohibition in 1835. Fore-
most among these practices, because supported
by the sanction of the State and carried on in
the Queen's name, is the institution of the
Royal Buckhounds/ It does not seem too
much to demand that all worrying of tame or
captured animals — whether of the stag turned
out from a cart, the rabbit from a sack, or
the pigeon from a cage — should be interpreted
as equivalent to " baiting," and so brought
within the scope of the Acts of 1835 and 1849.
There is also need of extending to "vermin"
some sort of protection against the wholly un-
necessary tortures that are recklessly inflicted
on them, and of abolishing or restricting the
common use of the barbarous steel-trap.

The exposure lately made ^ of the horrors
of Atlantic cattle-ships — scenes that reproduce
almost exactly the worst atrocities of the slaver
— is likely to lead to some welcome improve-

^ See p. 74.

^ "Cattle-Ships," by Samuel Plimsoll, 1890.

L incs of Reform. 129

mcnt in the details of that lugubrious traffic.
But this will not be sufficient in itself; for the
cruelties committed in the slaughter, no less
than in the transit, of " live-stock " call im-
peratively for some public cognizance and
reprobation. The discontinuance, in our
crowded districts, of all private slaughter-
houses, and the substitution of public abattoirs
under efficient municipal control, would do
something to mitigate the worst features of
the evil, and this reform should at once be
pressed on the attention of local legislative
bodies. Lastly, in this short list of urgent
temporary measures, stands the question of
vivisection ; and here there can be no relaxa-
tion of the demand for total and unqualified
prohibition.

But, when all is said, it remains true that
legislation, important though it is, must ever
be secondary to the awakening of the humane
instincts ; even education itself can only appeal
with success to those whose minds are in some
degree naturally predisposed to receive it. I
have spoken of the desirability of an intellectual
crusade against the main causes of the unjust
treatment of animals ; but I would not be
understood to believe, as some humanitarians
appear to do, that a hardened world might be

130 Animals Rights.

miraculously converted by the preaching of
a new St. Francis, if such a personality could
be somehow evolved out of our nineteenth-
century commercialism!'^ In this infinitely
complex modern society, great wrongs cannot
be wholly righted by simple means, not even
by the consuming enthusiasm of the prophet ;
since any particular form of injustice is but
part and parcel of a far more deep-lying evil
— the selfish, aggressive tendencies that are
still so largely inherent in the human race.

Only with the gradual progress of an en-
lightened sense of equality shall we remedy
these wrongs ; and the object of our crusade
should be not so much to convert opponents
(who, by the very disabilities and limitations
of their faculties, can never be really converted,)
as to set the confused problem in a clear light,
and at least discriminate unmistakably between
our enemies and our allies. In all social con-
troversies the issues are greatly obscured by
the babel of names and phrases and cross-
arguments that are bandied to and fro ; so
that many persons, who by natural sympathy
and inclination are the friends of reform, are
found to be ranked among its foes ; while not

^ See article by Ouida, " Fortnightly Review," April,
1892.

Lilies oj Reform.

131

a few of its foes, in similar unconsciousness,
have strayed into the opposite camp. To state
the issues distinctly, and so attract and consoli-
date a genuine body of support, is, perhaps, at
the present time, the best service that humani-
tarians can render to the movement they wish
to promote.

In conclusion, I would state emphatically that
this essay is not an appeal ad misericordiam
to those who themselves practise, or who con-
done in others, the deeds against which a pro-
test is here raised. It is not a plea for " mercy "
(save the mark !) to the "brute-beasts" whose
sole criminality consists in not belonging to
the noble family of homo sapiens. It is ad-
dressed rather to those who see and feel that,
as has been well said, " the great advancement
of the world, throughout all ages, is to be
measured by the increase of humanity and
the decrease of cruelty " — that man, to be
truly man, must cease to abnegate his common
fellowship with all living nature — and that the
coming realization of human rights will inevi-
tably bring after it the tardier but not less
certain realization of the rights of the lower
races.

APPENDIX.

I HAVE not attempted in the following pages to give
a complete bibliography of the doctrine of Animals'
Rights, but merely a list of the chief English works,
touching directly on that subject, which have come
within my own notice. The passages quoted from
the older and less accessible books may serve the
double purpose of showing the rise and progress of
the movement, and of reinforcing the conclusions
arrived at in the essay to which they are appended.

The Fable of the Bees. By Bernard de Man-
deville. 1723.

As Mandeville, whether cynic or moralist, has
been credited by some opponents of the rights of
animals with being the author of that pernicious
theory, I quote a few sentences from the most
famous of his volumes : " I have often thought,"
he says, " if it was not for this tyranny which cus-
tom usurps over us, that men of any tolerable good-
nature could never be reconcil'd to the killing of
so many animals for their daily food, as long as the

134 Animals Rights.

bountiful earth so plentifully provides them with
varieties of vegetable dainties. ... In such perfect
animals as sheep and oxen, in whom the heart, the
brain and nerves diifer so little from ours, and in
whom the separation of the spirits from the blood,
the organs of sense, and consequently feeling itself,
are the same as they are in human creatures ; I
can't imagine how a man not harden'd in blood
and massacre is able to see a violent death, and
the pangs of it, without concern. In answer to
this, most people will think it sufficient to say that
all things being allow'd to be made for the service
of man, there can be no cruelty in putting creatures
to the use they were design'd for ; but I have
heard men make this reply while their nature
within them has reproach'd them with the false-
hood of the assertion."

Fi'ee ThougJits upon the Brute Creation. By
John Hildrop, M.A. London, 1742.

This " examination" of Father Bougeant's " Philo-
sophical Amusement upon the Language of Beasts"
(1740), in which it is ironically contended that the
souls of animals are imprisoned devils, is an argu-
ment in favour of animal immortality, in the form
of two letters addressed to a lady. " Do but
examine your own compassionate heart," says the
author, " and tell me, do you not think it a breach
of natural justice wantonly and without necessity to

Appciidix, 135

torment, much more to take away the Hfe of any
creature, except for the preservation and happiness
of your own being ; which, in our present state of
enmity and discord, is sometimes unavoidable ? . . .
But I expect you will tell me, as many grave authors
of great learning and little understanding have done
before you, that there is not even the appearance
of injustice or cruelty in this procedure ; that if the
brutes themselves had power to speak, to complain,
to appeal to a court of justice, and plead their own
cause, they could have no just reason for such com-
plaint. This you may say, but I know you too well
to believe you think so ; but it is an objection
thrown in your way by some serious writers upon
this subject. They tell you that their existence was
given them upon this very condition, that it should
be temporary and short, that after they had flutter'd,
or crept, or swam, or walk'd about their respective
elements for a little season, they should be swept
away by the hand of violence, or the course of
nature, into an entire extinction of being, to make
room for their successors in the same circle of
vanity and corruption. But, pray, who told them
so ? Where did they learn this philosophy ? Does
either reason or revelation give the least coun-
tenance to such a bold assertion ? So far from it,
that it seems a direct contradiction to both."

136 An imals Rights.

A Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy and Sin
of Cruelty to Brute Animals. By Hum-
phry Frimatt, D.D. London, 1776.

" However men may differ," says the audior of
this quaint but excellent book, " as to speculative
points of religion, justice is a rule of universal ex-
tent and invariable obligation. We acknowledge
this important truth in all matters in which Man is
concerned, but then we limit it to our own species
only. And though we are able to trace the most
evident marks of the Creator's wisdom and good-
ness, in the formation and appointment of the
various classes of animals that are inferior to men,
yet the consciousness of our own dignity and ex-
cellence is apt to suggest to us that Man alone of
all terrestrial animals is the only proper object of
mercy and compassion, because he is the most
highly favoured and distinguished. Misled with
this prejudice in our own favour, we overlook some
of the Brutes as if they were meer excrescences of
Nature, beneath our notice and infinitely unworthy
the care and cognizance of the Almighty ; and we
consider others of them as made only for our ser-
vice ; and so long as we can apply them to our use
we are careless and indifferent as to their happiness
or misery, and can hardly bring ourselves to sup-
pose that there is any kind of duty incumbent upon
us toward them. To rectify this mistaken notion
is the design of this treatise."

Appendix. 137

With much force he applies to the animal ques-
tion the precept of doi7ig to otiicrs as wc would be
done unto. " If, in brutal shape, we had been
endued with the same degree of reason and reflec-
tion which we now enjoy; and other beings, in
human shape, should take upon them to torment,
abuse, and barbarously ill-treat us, because we were
not made in their shape ; the injustice and cruelty
of their behaviour to us would be self-evident ; and
we should naturally infer that, whether we walk
upon two legs or four; whether our heads are
prone or erect ; whether we are naked or covered
with hair ; whether we have tails or no tails, horns
or no horns, long ears or round ears ; or, whether
we bray like an ass, speak like a man, whistle like a
bird, or are mute as a fish — Nature never in-
tended these distinctions as foundations for right of
tyranny and oppression."

He exposes the fallacy of the argument drawn
from the cruelty of animals to animals. " For us
to infer that men may be cruel to brutes in general,
because some brutes are naturally fierce and blood-
thirsty, is tantamount to saying, Cruelty in Britain
is no sin, because there are wild tigers in India.
But is tJieir ferocity and brutality to be the stan-
dard and pattern of our humanity ? And because
they have no compassion, are wc to have no com-
passion ? Because they have little or no reason,
are lue to have no reason ? Or are 7ve to become
as very brutes as they ? However, we need not go

138 Animals Rights.

as far as India ; for even in England dogs will
worry and cocks will fight (though not so often, if
we did not set them on, and prepare them for the
battle). Yet what is that to us ? Are w^e dogs ?
are we fighting cocks ? are they to be our tutors
and instructors, that we appeal to them for argu-
ments to justify and palliate our inhumanity ? No.
Let tigers roar, let dogs worry, and cocks fight ;
but it is astonishing that 7nen^ who boast so much
of the dignity of their nature, the superior excel-
lence of their understanding, and the immortality
of their souls (which, by-the-by, is a circumstance
which cruel men above all others have the least
reason to glory in), should disgrace their dignity
and understanding by recurring to the practice of
the low and confessedly irrational part of the
creation in vindication of their own conduct."

The bulk of the book is occupied with references
to scriptural texts on the duty of humaneness. The
concluding moral is as follows : " See that no brute
of any kind, whether intrusted to thy care, or coming
in thy way, suffer through thy neglect or abuse.
Let no views of profit, no compliance with custom,
and no fear of the ridicule of the world, ever tempt
thee to the least act of cruelty or injustice to any
creature whatsoever. But let this be your invariable
rule, everywhere, and at all times, to do unto others
as, in their condition, you wou/d be done imto^

Appendix, 139

Disquisitions on Several Subjects. By Soame
Jenyns. 1782.

Soame Jenyns (i 704-1 787) was an essayist, poet,
and politician, whose writings, though now nearly
forgotten, were highly estimated by his own genera-
tion. Chapter II. of his " Disquisitions " treats of
" Cruelty to Inferior Animals," and is one of the
best of the early treatises on the subject.

" No small part of mankind," he says, " derive
their chief amusements from the death and sufferings
of inferior animals ; a much greater consider them
only as engines of wood or iron, useful in their
several occupations. The carman drives his horse,
and the carpenter his nail, by repeated blows ; and
so long as these produce the desired effect, and they
both go, they neither reflect nor care whether either
of them have any sense of feeling. The butcher
knocks down the stately ox with no more compas-
sion than the blacksmith hammers a horse-shoe, and
plunges his knife into the throat of the innocent
lamb with as little reluctance as the tailor sticks his
needle into the collar of a coat.

" If there are some few who, formed in a softer
mould, view with pity the sufferings of these de-
fenceless creatures, there is scarce one who enter-
tains the least idea that justice or gratitude can be
due to their merits or their services. The social and
friendly dog is hanged without remorse, if by bark-
ing in defence of his master's person and property,

140 Ajiimals Rights.

he happens unknowingly to disturb his rest ; the
generous horse, who has carried his ungrateful
master for many years with ease and safety, worn
out with age and infirmities contracted in his service,
is by him condemned to end his miserable days in
a dust-cart .... These, with innumerable other
acts of cruelty, injustice, and ingratitude, are every
day committed, not only with impunity, but without
censure, and even without observation, but we may
be assured that they cannot finally pass away un-
noticed and unretaliated."

Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation. By Jeremy Bentham. Lon-
don, 1789 (printed 1780).

The following is the most notable passage in
Bentham's works on the subject of animals' rights.
It occurs in the chapter on "Limits between Private
Ethics and the Art of Legislation," in which he
shows that ethics concern a man's own conduct,
legislation his treatment of others.

"What other agents, then, [/,<?., apart from oneself]
are there, which, at the same time that they are
under the influence of man's direction, are sus-
ceptible of happiness ? They are of two sorts :

"I. Other human beings, who are ^Xylad persons.

" II. Other animals, which on account of their
interests having been neglected by the insensibihty

Appendix. 1 4 1

of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class
of tliiiigs^

To the above is subjoined in a foot-note: "Under
the Gentoo and Mahometan religions, the inte-
rests of the rest of the animal creation seem to
have met with some attention. Why have they
not, universally, with as much as those of human
creatures, allowance made for the difference in
point of sensibility? Because the Laws that are,
have been the work of mutual fear — a sentiment
which the less rational animals have not had the
same means as man has of turning to account.
Why ought they not ? No reason can be given. If
the being eaten were all, there is a very good reason
why we should be suffered to eat such of them as
we like to eat : we are the better for it, and they are
never the worse .... If the being killed were all,
there is very good reason why we should be suffered
to kill such as molest us : we should be the worse
for their living, and they are never the worse of
being dead. But is there any reason why we should
be suffered to torment them ? Not any that I can
see. Are there any why we should not be suffered
to torment them ? Yes,- several. The day has
been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet
past, in which the greater part of the species, under
the denomination of slaves, have been treated by
the law exactly upon the same footing as, in England,
for example, the inferior races of animals are still.
The day 7nay come when the rest of the animal

142 Animals Rights,

creation may acquire those rights which never could
have been withholden from them but by the hand of
tyranny. The French have already discovered that
the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human
being should be abandoned, without redress, to the
caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to
be recognized that the number of the legs, the
villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os
sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandon-
ing a sensitive being to the same fate. What else
is it should trace the insuperable line? Is it the
faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of dis-
course ? But a full-grown horse or dog is, beyond
comparison, a more rational, as well as more con-
versable animal than an infant of a day, a week, or
even a month old. But suppose the' case were
otherwise, what would it avail ? The question is
not. Can they i'easo7i ? nor, Can they talk .? but,
Can they stiffer ?

The Cry of Nature, or An Appeal to Mercy
and Justice on behalf of the Persecuted
Animals. By John Oswald. 1791.

John Oswald (1730-1793) was a native of Edin-
burgh, who served as an officer in India, and became
intimately acquainted with Hindoo customs. He
was a vegetarian, and the main object of his " Cry
of Nature " is to advocate the discontinuance of
flesh-eating. Much of what he writes on the animal

Appendix. 143

question is eloquent and forcible, though the book
is disfigured by an ornate and affected style. Here
is an example :

" Sovereign despot of the world, lord of the life
and death of every creature, — man, with the slaves
of his tyranny, disclaims the ties of kindred. How-
e'er attuned to the feelings of the human heart, their
affections are the mere result of mechanic impulse ;
howe'er they may verge on human wisdom, their
actions have only the semblance of sagacity : en-
lightened by the ray of reason, man is immensely
removed from animals who have only instinct for
their guide, and born to immortality, he scorns with
the brutes that perish a social bond to acknowledge.
Such are the unfeeling dogmas, which, early instilled
into the mind, induce a callous insensibility, foreign
to the native texture of the heart ; such the cruel
speculations which prepare us for the practice of
that remorseless tyranny, and which palliate the foul
oppression that, over inferior but fellow creatures,
we delight to exercise."

A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes. Lon-
don, 1792.

This little volume is attributed to Thomas Taylor,
the Platonist, the translator of Porphyry's famous
work on " Abstinence from the flesh of Living
Beings." It was, as already stated, designed to
throw ridicule on the theory of human rights.

144 Ani77zals Rights.

In Chapter I. he ironically lays down the proposi-
tion " that God hath made all things equal." " It
appears at first sight," he says, " somewhat singular
that a moral truth of the highest importance and
most illustrious evidence, should have been utterly
unknown to the ancients, and not yet fully perceived,
and universally acknowledged, even in such an en-
lightened age as the present. The truth I allude to
is the eqtiality of all things^ with respect to their in-
trinsic a7id real dignity and worth .... I perceive,
however, with no small delight that this sublime
doctrine is daily gaining ground among the thinking
part of mankind. Mr. Payne has already convinced
thousands of the equality of men to each other;
and Mrs. Woolstoncraft has indisputably proved that
women are in every respect naturally equal to men,
not only in mental abilities, but likewise in bodily
strength, boldness, and the like."

A Philosophical Treatise on Horses ^ and on the
Moral Duties of Man towards the Brute
Creation. By John Lawrence. Two vols,
London, 1796- 1798. Vol. I. chapter iii.
deals with " The Rights of Beasts ; "
Vol. II. chapter i. with "The Philosophy
of Sports."

John Lawrence, described as " a literary farmer,"
was an authority on agriculture and the manage-
ment of domestic animals. He was a humani-

Appendix. 145

tarian, and was consulted by Richard Martin, M.P.,
on the details of the Ill-treatment of Cattle Bill,
which became law in 1822. Humanity is the most
conspicuous feature of Lawrence's writings. " From
my first contributions to the periodical press," so
he subsequently wrote, " I have embraced as many
opportunities as were in my power of introducing
the subject, and have never written any book on
the care and management of animals wherein that
important branch has been neglected."

" It has ever been," says Lawrence, " and still is,
the invariable custom of the bulk of mankind, not
even excepting legislators, both religious and civil,
to look upon brutes as mere machines ; animated,
yet without souls ; endowed with feelings, but
utterly devoid of rights ; and placed without the
pale of justice. From these defects, and from the
idea, ill understood, of their being created merely
for the use and purposes of man, have the feelings
of beasts, their lawful, that is, natural interests and
welfare, been sacrificed to his convenience, his
cruelty, or his caprice.

" It is but too easy to demonstrate, by a series of
melancholy facts, that brute creatures are not yet,
in the contemplation of any people, reckoned within
the scheme of general justice ; that they reap only
the benefit of a partial and inefficacious kind of
compassion. Yet it is easy to prove, by analogies
drawn from our own, that they also have souls ;
and perfectly consistent with reason to infer a

L

146 Animals Rights.

gradation of intellect, from the spark which
animates the most minute mortal exiguity, up to
the sum of infinite intelligence, or the general soul
of the universe. By a recurrence to principles, it
will appear that life, intelligence, and feeling, neces-
sarily imply rights. Justice, in which are included
mercy, or compassion, obviously refer to sense and
feeling. Now is the essence of justice divisible?
Can there be one kind of justice for men, and
another for brutes ? Or is feeling in them a diffe-
rent thing to what it is in ourselves ? Is not a
beast produced by the same rule, and in the same
order of generation vrith ourselves ? Is not his
body nourished by the same food, hurt by the
same injuries ; his mind actuated by the same pas-
sions and affections which animate !he human
breast ; and does not he also, at last, mingle his dust
with ours, and in like manner surrender up the
vital spark to the aggregate, or fountain of intelli-
gence ? Is this spark, or soul, to perish because it
chanced to belong to a beast? Is it to become
annihilate? Tell me, learned philosophers, how
that may possibly happen."

On the Conduct of Man to Inferior Animals.
By George Nicholson. Manchester, 1797.

The author of this work was a well-known Brad-
ford printer (1760-1825), one of the pioneers of the
cheap literature of the present day. In 1801 he

Appendix. 1 4 7

published an enlarged edition, under the title of
" The Primeval Diet of Man ; Arguments in favour
of Vegetable Food ; On Man's Conduct to Animals,
etc., etc." The book is in great measure a com-
pilation of passages illustrative of man's cruelty to
the lower kinds.

" In our conduct to animals," he writes in the
"concluding reflections," "one plain rule may
determine what form it ought to take, and prove an
effectual guard against an improper treatment of
them ; — a rule universally admitted as the founda-
tion of moral rectitude ; treat the anitnal which is
ill your power, in such a manner as you would wil-
lingly be treated, were you such an ajtiinal. From
men of imperious temper, inflated by wealth, de-
voted to sensual gratifications, and influenced by
fashion, no share of humanity can be expected.
He who is capable of enslaving his own species, of
treating the inferior ranks of them with contempt
or austerity, and who can be unmoved by their
misfortunes, is a man formed of the materials of a
cannibal, and will exercise his temper on the lower
orders of animal life with inflexible obduracy. No
arguments of truth or justice can affect such a har-
dened mind. Even persons of more gentle natures,
having long been initiated in corrupt habits, do not
readily listen to sensations of feeling ; or, if the
principles of justice, mercy, and tenderness be ad-
mitted, such principles are merely theoretical, and
influence not their conduct

148 Animals Rights.

" But the truly independent and sympathizing
mind will ever derive satisfaction from the prospect
of well-being, and will not incline to stifle convic-
tions arising from the genuine evidences of truth.
Without fear or hesitation he will become proof
against the sneers of unfeeling men, exhibit an
uniform example of humanity, and impress on

others additional arguments and motives

In the present diseased and ruined state of society,
the prospect is far distant when the System of
Benevolence is likely to be generally adopted. The
hope of reformation then arises from the intelligent,
less corrupted, and younger part of mankind ; but
the numbers are comparatively few who think for
themselves, and who are not infected b]^ long-esta-
blished and pernicious customs. It is a pleasure
to foster the idea of a golden age regained, when
the thought of the butcher shall not mingle with
the sight of our flocks and herds. May the benevo-
lent system spread to every corner of the globe !
May we learn to recognize and to respect, in other
animals, the feelings which vibrate in ourselves ! "

An Essay on Humanity to Animals. By-
Thomas Young, Fellow of Trinity Col-
lege, Cambridge. London, 1798.

" In offering to the public a book on Humanity
to Animals," writes the author of this little volume,
" I am sensible that I lay myself open to no small

Appendix. 149

portion of ridicule : independent of all the common
dangers to which authors are exposed. To many,
no doubt, the subject which I have chosen will
appear whimsical and uninteresting, and the par-
ticulars into which it is about to lead me ludicrous
and mean. From the reflecting, however, and the
humane I shall hope for a different opinion ; and
of these the number, I trust, among my country-
men is by no means inconsiderable. The exertions
which have been made to diminish the sufferings of
the prisoner, and to better the condition of the
poor, the flourishing state of charitable institutions ;
the interest excited in the nation by the struggles
for the abolition of the slave-trade ; the growing
detestation of religious persecution — all these and
other circumstances induce me to believe that we
have not been retrograde in Humanity during the
present century : and I feel the more inclination
and encouragement to execute the task to w^hich I
have set myself, inasmuch as humanity to animals
presents itself to my mind as having an important
connection with humanity towards mankind."

The author bases his plea for animals' rights on
the light of nature. " Animals are endued with a
capability of perceiving pleasure and pain ; and
from the abundant provision which we perceive in
the world for the gratification of their several senses,
we must conclude that the Creator wills the happi-
ness of these his creatures, and consequently that
humanity towards them is agreeable to him, and

150 A^iimals Rights,

cruelty the contrary. This, I take it, is the founda-
tion of the rights of animals, as far as they can be
traced independently of scripture ; and is, even by
itself, decisive on the subject, being the same sort
of argument as that on which moralists found the
Rights of Mankind, as deduced from the Light of
Nature."

The book opens with a general essay on humanity
and cruelty, and contains chapters on sport, the
treatment of horses, cruelties connected with the
table, etc. etc. It is quoted approvingly by Thomas
Forster and later advocates of humanity.

Moral Inquiries on the Situatio7i of Man and
of Brutes, By Lewis Gompertz. Lon-
don, 1824.

Lewis Gompertz was an ardent humanitarian and
a mechanical inventor of no little ingenuity, many
of his inventions being designed to save animal
suffering. He died in 1861. From 1826 to 1832
he was secretary of the Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty ; but being then compelled to withdraw,
owing to religious differences, he founded the
Animals' Friend Society, and a journal of the same
name.

" It needs but little power of rhetoric," he says
in his opening chapter, " to prove that it is highly
culpable in man to torture the brute creation for
amusement ; but, strange it would seem ! this self-

Appnidix. 1 5 i

evident principle is not only openly violated by men
whose rank in life has denied them the benefit of
good education or leisure for reflection, but also by
those with whom neither expense nor trouble has
been spared towards the formation of their intellec-
tual powers, even in their most abstracted recesses,
and who in other respects delight in the application
of their abilities towards everything that is good
and meritorious. It is to be lamented that even
philosophers frequently forget themselves on this
subject, and relate, with the greatest indifference,
the numerous barbarous and merciless experiments
they have performed on the suffering and innocent
brutes, even on those who show affection for them ;
and then coldly make their observations and calcu-
lations on every different form in which the agony
produced by them manifests itself. But this they
do for the advancement of science ! and expect
much praise for their meritorious exertions ; for-
getting that science should be subservient to the
welfare of man and other animals, and ought not
to be pursued merely through emulation, nor even
for the sensual gratification the mind derives from
them, at the expense of justice, the destruction of
the happiness of others, and the production of their
misery — as pleasure and pain are the only things of
importance. . . . Forbid it that we should give
assent to such tenets as these, and that we should
suffer for one moment our reason to be veiled by
such delusions ! But, on the contrary, let us hold

152 A^iimals Rights.

fast every idea, and cherish every glimmering of
such kind of knowledge as that which shall enable
us to distinguish between right and wrongs what is
due to one individual, what to another."

A later volume, " Fragments in Defence of
Animals," 1852, is a collection of articles contri-
buted by the same author to the " Animals'
Friend."

PJiilozoia, or Moral Reflections on the actual
condition of the Animal Kingdom^ and
tJie means of improving tJie same. By
T. Forster. Brussels, 1839.

The author of this excellent treatise, which is
addressed to Lewis Gompertz, was a distinguished
naturalist and astronomer who had taken an active
part in the founding of the Animals' Friend Society.
He was born in 1789, and died at Brussels in i860,
having lived abroad during the latter part of his
life. A section of his book is devoted to the " Con-
dition of Animals on the Continent."

" One of the surest means," he says, "of better-
ing the condition of animals will be to improve the
character of man, by giving to children a humane
rational education, and, above all, setting before
them examples of kindness. Hitherto nothing has
been so much neglected as this duty, and the evil
effects of this neglect have been generally visible in
the character of the people. At present it is better

Appendix. 1 5 3

understood ; but a great deal remains to be done,
and as the education of children will not be
thoroughly reformed till their instructors are first
set to rights, I should propose to your society to
procure the delivery of lectures on the subject at
the various mechanics' institutes in England."

Of sport, he says : " You will do well to reflect on
this, and to inquire whether the just suppression of
bull-baiting, cock-fighting, and other such vulgar
and vicious pastimes, should not, as the age be-
comes more and more civilized, be followed by the
abolition of fox-hunting, and all sporting not imme-
diately directed to the object of obtaining game for
food by the most easy and expeditious means."

On the subject of " the Cruelty connected with
the Culinary Art," he has also some wise remarks :
" Some persons in Europe carry their notions about
cruelty to animals so far as not to allow themselves
to eat animal food. Many very intelligent men
have, at different times of their lives, abstained
wholly from flesh ; and this, too, with very con-
siderable advantage to their health. . . . All these
facts, taken collectively, point to a period in the
progress of civilization when men will cease to slay
their fellow-mortals in the animal world for food.
. . . The return of this paradisical state may be
rather remote ; but in the meantime we ought to
make the experiment, and set an example of
humanity by abstaining, if not from all, at least
from those articles of cookery with which any

154 Animals Rights.

particular cruelty may be connected, such as veal,
when the calves are killed in the ordinary way."

Equally noteworthy are the chapters on " Cruelty
in Surgical Experiments," and " Animals considered
as our Fellow Creatures."

The Obligation and Extent of Humanity to
Brutes^ principally considered luith refe-
rence to the Domesticated Animals. By
W. Youatt. London, 1839.

William Youatt (i 77.7-1847), Professor in the
Royal Veterinary College, and author of many
standard works on veterinary subjects, was a mem-
ber of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty.

" The claims of humanity," he says in his intro-
duction, " however they may be neglected or out-
raged in a variety of respects, are recognized by
every ethical writer. They are truly founded on
reason and on scripture, and in fact are indelibly
engraven on the human heart.

"But to what degree are they recognized and
obeyed ? To what extent are they inculcated, not
only in many excellent treatises on moral philo-
sophy, but by the great majority of the expounders
of the scriptures ? We answer with shame, and
with an astonishment that increases upon us in
proportion as we think of the subject, — the duties
of humanity are represented as extending to our
fellow-men, to the victims of oppression or misfor-

Appendix. 155

tune, the deaf and the dumb, the bHnd, the slave,
the beggared prodigal, and even the convicted
felon — all these receive more or less sympathy ;
but, with exceptions, few and far between, not
a writer pleads for the innocent and serviceable
creatures — brutes as they are termed — that minister
to our wants, natural or artificial.

" Nevertheless, the claims of the lower animals to
humane treatment, or at least to exemption from
abuse, are as good as any that man can urge upon
man. Although less intelligent, and not immortal,
they are susceptible of pain : but because they can-
not remonstrate, nor associate with their fellows in
defence of their rights, our best theologians and
philosophers have not condescended to plead their
cause, or even to make mention of them ; although,
as just asserted, they have as much right to protec-
tion from ill-usage as the best of their masters have.

" Nay, the matter has been carried further than
this. At no very distant period, the right of wan-
tonly torturing the inferior animals, as caprice or
passion dictated, was unblushingly claimed ; and it
was asserted that the prevention of this was an in-
terference with the rights and liberties of man !
Strange that at the beginning of the nineteenth
century this should have been the avowed opinion
of some of the British legislators ; and that the
advocate of the claims of the brute should have
been regarded as a fool or a madman, or a com-
pound of both."

156 Anhnals Rights.

The book contains chapters on the usefulness
and good quahties of the inferior animals, the ap-
plication of the principle of humanity, the dissec-
tion of living animals, the study of natural history,
etc.

A Few Notes on Cruelty to Anhnals. By
Ralph Fletcher. London, 1846.

This treatise, by a medical man, President of the
Gloucester S.P.C.A., deals with various forms of
cruelty to the domestic animals. I quote a passage
from the Introductory Note : —

" The quantity and variety of suffering endured
by the lower creation of animals when domesticated
by man have struck the author with awful force,
but more especially since his connection with a
Society for their alleviation : a mingled feeling of
pity, horror, and anxiety is left on the mind at the
helpless and certain fate of such a vast crowd of
innocent beings . . . There is a moral as well as a
physical character to all animal life, however humble
it may be, — enveloped indeed in obscurity, and
with a mysterious solemnity which must ever be-
long to the secrets of the Eternal. Let us then
approach with caution the unknown character of
the brute, as being an emanation from Himself;
and treat with tenderness and respect the helpless
creatures derived from such a source. . . .

" Let us not, therefore, enter into the needless

Appendix. 1 5 7

question whether animals have souls. We behold
the miseries of the poor dumb creature, we feel
that we have free-will sufficient, and the means, to
lighten his burdens ; let us therefore commence
with energy this really benevolent purpose, rather
than assume theories of his happiness which are
but apologies for our want of feeling, our avarice,
or our indolence."

Some Talk, about A}iimals and their Masters.
By Sir Arthur Helps. London, 1873.

This pleasant and popular little book contains
many good remarks about animals. But there is
no attempt in it to advance any distinct or con-
sistent view of the question.

Mmi and Beast, Jiere and hereafter. By the
Rev. J. G. Wood. London, 1874.

This is a plea for animal immortality, by a well-
known naturalist. His plan is threefold. First, to
show that the Bible does not deny a future life to
animals. Secondly, to prove by anecdotes, "that
the lower animals share with man the attributes of
Reason, Language, Memory, a sense of moral re-
sponsibility. Unselfishness, and Love, all of which
belong to the spirit and not to the body." Thirdly,
to conclude that, as man expects to retain these
qualities after death, the presumption is in favour
of the animals also retaining them.

158 Animals Rights.

A list of numerous works on the subject of
animal immortality may be found in " The Litera-
ture of the Doctrine of a Future Life," Appendix IL,
New York, 187 1, by Ezra Abbot.

The Rights of an Animal, a new Essay in
Ethics. By Edward Byron Nicholson,

M.A. London, 1879.

This plea for animals' rights gives much interest-
ing information on the animal question in general.
It contains a reprint of part of John Lawrence's
chapter on " The Rights of Beasts," with a memoir
of the author.

A Plea for Mercy to Animals. By J. Macaulay.
London, 1881.

The author directs his argument, on religious
grounds, against vivisection and the deliberate ill-
usage of animals ; but does not advocate any dis-
tinct theory of rights.

TJie Ethics of Diet, a Catena of Authorities
deprecatory of the habit of Flesli-eating.
By Howard Williams, M.A. London
and Manchester, 1883.

Of all recent books on the subject of animals'
rights this is by far the most scholarly and exhaus-
tive. Though written primarily from a vegetarian

Appendix. 159

standpoint, it contains a vast amount of general
information on the various phases of the animal
question, and is therefore invaluable to any earnest
student of that subject. The key-note of the book
is struck in the following passage of the preface :

" In the general constitution of life on our globe,
suffering and slaughter, it is objected, are the normal
and constant condition of things — the strong relent-
lessly and cruelly preying upon the weak in endless
succession — and, it is asked, why then should the
human species form an exception to the general rule,
and hopelessly fight against Nature ? To this it is to
be replied, first : that, although too certainly an un-
ceasing and cruel internecine warfare has been waged
upon this atomic globe of ours from the first origin
of Life until now, yet, apparently, there has been
going on a slow, but not uncertain, progress towards
the ultimate elimination of the crueller phenomena
of Life ; that, if the carnivora form a very large
proportion of living beings, yet the non-carnivora
are in the majority ; and lastly, what is still more to
the purpose, that Man most evidently by his origin
and physical organization belongs not to the former
but to the latter ; besides and beyond w^iich, that
in proportion as he boasts himself (and as he is seen
at his best, and only so far, he boasts himself with
justice) to be the highest of all the gradually
ascending and co-ordinated series of living beings,
so is he, in that proportion, bound to prove his
right to the supreme place and power, and his

i6o Animals Rights,

asserted claims to moral as well as mental superiority,
by his conduct. In brief, in so far only as he proves
himself to be the beneficent ruler and pacificator —
and not the selfish tyrant — of the world, can he
have any just title to the moral pre-eminence."

Our Duty towards Animals. By Philip Austin.
London, 1885.

The author of this pamphlet, discussing the
question " in the light of Christian philosophy,"
argues that animals have no rights, and quotes many
passages to prove that such a theory is contrary to
the teaching of Scripture and the early Fathers.
" The morality," he says, " which satisfied S.
Augustine may surely be considered good enough
for the English churchman of to-day." He ridicules
Sir A. Helps' idea of showing "courtesy" to animals.
"It should be remembered that they are our slaves,
not our equals, and for this reason it is well to keep
up such practices as hunting and fishing, driving
and riding, merely to demonstrate in a practical way
man's dominion over the brutes. ... It is found
that an advocacy of the rights of brutes is associated
with the lowest phases of morality, and that kind-
ness to the brutes is a mere work of supererogation."

This essay is well worth the attention of humani-
tarians, as coming from an out-spoken opponent of
animals' rights, — one whose views are an interesting
survival of the mediaeval spirit of utter indifference

Appendix. 1 6 1

to animal suffering. It sets forth and applauds with
singular frankness — I had almost said brutality —
the disregard which the Catholic Church has always
shown for " the beasts that perish;" thereby afford-
ing a valuable object-lesson as to the only logical
alternative to the creed of humanity. That Mr.
Austin's argument is not a burlesque, but a fair ex-
position of Catholic doctrine, may be shown by the
following significant passage from an article on
"The Lower Animals" in the "Catholic Dictionary,"
by W. E. Addis and T. Arnold, 1884.

" As the lower animals have no duties, since they
are destitute of free will, without which the perfor-
mance of duty is impossible, so they have no rights,
for right and duty are correlative terms. The brutes
are made for man, who has the same right over them
which he has over plants and stones. He may,
according to the express permission of God, given
to Noe, kill them for his food ; and if it is lawful to
destroy them for food, and this without strict neces-
sity, it must also be lawful to put them to death, or
to inflict pain on them, for any good and reasonable
end, such as the promotion of man's knowledge,
health, etc., or even for the purposes of recreation.
But a limitation must be introduced here. It is
never lawful for a man to take pleasure directly in
the pain given to brutes, because, in doing so, man
degrades and brutalizes his own nature."

M

1 62 Afiimals Rights,

The Duties and the Rights of Man. By J. B.
Austin, 1887.

In Book V. the author deals with the " Indirect
Duties of Man towards Animals." While not allow-
ing more than " instinct " to animals, and asserting
that " in the whole of the animal kingdom there is
not a single specimen possessing even a spark of
reason," he advocates humaneness on the ground
that animals are "sensitive beings." "By cultivating
the faculty of sympathy, and by considering that
sensibility to pain is common to both men and
animals, we soon perceive that to inflict needless
and unjust pain upon the latter, is to sin against
one's own nature, and therefore to commit a.crime."

CHISWICK PRESS : — C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT
CHANCERY LANE.

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