Rabbit Advocacy Animal Matters

Animals’ Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress

by Henry S. Salt

New York: Macmillan & Co, 1894

" 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. Dwelling thus for a while, fulfilling thy appointed time—thou too shall come to thyself at last.

" Thy half-warm horns and long tongue lapping round my wrist, do not conceal thy humanity any more 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.

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 principle underlies the various efforts of humanitarian reformers, and to make a clearance of the comfortable fallacies which the apologists of the present system have industriously accumulated. While not hesitating to speak strongly when occasion demanded, I have tried to avoid the tone of irrelevant recrimination 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 vivisection, 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 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 in 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 foot-notes and appendices.

H. S. S.

September, 1892.

Chapter I

The Principle of Animals’ Rights

have the lower animals "rights?" Undoubtedly—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 suspicion 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 nevertheless 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 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 freedom, asserts that it is right he should have this restricted freedom.... And hence the several particular freedoms deducible may fitly be called, as they commonly are called, his rights. '"[1]

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 assume, therefore, that men are possessed of " rights " in the sense of Herbert Spencer's 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 Buddhist and Pythagorean canons, dominated perhaps 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 conspicuous, took still higher ground in preaching humanity on the broadest principle of universal 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 the rights and wrongs of the lower races. Then, with the Reformation and the revival of learning, came a revival also of humanitarian feeling, as may be seen in many passages of Erasmus and More, Shakespeare and Bacon; but it was not until the eighteenth century, the age of enlightenment and "sensibility, " of which Voltaire and Rousseau were the spokesmen, that the rights of animals obtained more deliberate recognition. From the great Revolution of 1789 dates the period when the world-wide spirit of humanitarianism, which had hitherto been felt by but one man in a million—the thesis of the philosopher 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 produced in England at this time by the publication 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 inevitable. In fact, such a claim was anticipated—if only in bitter jest—by a contemporary writer, who furnishes us with a notable instance of how the mockery of one generation may become the reality of the next. There was published anonymously in 1792 a little volume entitled "A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, "[2] a reductio ad absurdum of Mary Wollstonecraft's essay, written, as the author informs us, " to evince by demonstrative arguments the perfect equality 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 was 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 humanitarianism.

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 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 absence 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 protection 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."[3]

So, too, wrote one of Bentham's contemporaries: " 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 recognized the jus animalium, which ought surely to form a part of the jurisprudence of every system founded on the principles of justice and humanity."[4] 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 established both in private usage and by legal enactment.

It is interesting to note the exact commencement of this new principle in law. When Lord Erskine, speaking in the House of Lords in 1811, 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 protection afforded by it, for it applied only to cattle and " beasts of burden," than for the invaluable precedent which it created. From 1822 onward, the principle of that jus animalium for which Bentham had pleaded, was recognized, 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.[5] It is scarcely possible, in the face of this legislation, to maintain 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 the jus animalium, they have been made for the most part in a grudging, unwilling spirit, and rather in the interests of property than of principle ; while even the leading advocates of animals' rights seem to have shrunk from basing their claim on the only argument which can ultimately 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 subordinate those rights to anything and everything 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[6] 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 pleasures of sentient creatures must be reduced, in their case, to the abstinence from unnecessary destruction of life." Now, with respect to this statement, I must say that the notion of the life of an animal having " no moral purpose," belongs to a class of ideas which cannot possibly be accepted by the advanced humanitarian 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 antiquated 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 explanation 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, 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,[7] " as if the primitive Christians, by laying so much stress upon a future life, in contradistinction to this 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 disregard 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 compensation 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 have nothing but the enjoyment of this present life.'' 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 considerately treated. Among the many humane movements of the present age, none is more significant than the growing inclination, noticeable 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 annihilation.[8]

The second and not less fruitful source of modern inhumanity is to be found in the '' Cartesian '' doctrine —the theory of Descartes and his followers—that the lower animals are devoid of consciousness and feeling ; a theory which carried the " religious " notion a step further, and deprived the animals not only of their claim to 1 a life hereafter, 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 not feel! " " The theory of animal automatism," says one of the leading scientists of the present day,[9] " 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 arrogance and oppression.

Let me here quote a most impressive passage from Schopenhauer. " The unpardonable forgetfulness in which the lower animals have hitherto been left by the moralists of 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 anima 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 disturbed, were forced to attempt to consolidate their ' rational psychology ' by the aid of empiricism. They therefore set themselves to 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.''[10]

The fallacious idea that the lives of animals have " no moral purpose " is at root connected with these religious and philosophical pretensions which Schopenhauer so powerfully condemns. 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 sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals."[11] 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 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 are due to the habit of considering them as mere machines without susceptibilities, without reason, and without the capacity of a future.''[12]

This, then, is the position of those who assert that animals, like men, are necessarily possessed of certain limited rights, which cannot 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 circumstances permit.

" Freedom of choice and act," says Otiida, " is the first condition of animal as of human happiness. How many animals in a million have even relative freedom 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.''[13] Yet no human being is justified in regarding any animal whatsoever as a meaningless automaton, to be worked, or tortured, or eaten, as the case may be, for the 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 important 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 individuality which is most undoubtedly possessed by them. It was long ago remarked by Bentham, 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 neglected 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 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 exhortation to pity,"[14] 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 consideration must prove that they have innumerable ways, often quite human in variety and suggestiveness, of uttering their thoughts and emotions.[15] Even the term "animals," 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 interpretation 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 no other way can this key be found than by the full inclusion of the lower races within the pale of human sympathy. All the promptings of our best and surest instincts point us in this direction. "It is abundantly evident," says Lecky,[16] " both from history and from present experience, that the instinctive shock, or natural feelings of disgust, caused by the sight of the sufferings of men, is not generically different from that which is caused by the sight of the suffering of animals.''

If this be so—and the admission is a momentous one —can it be seriously contended that the same humanitarian tendency which has already emancipated the slave, will not ultimately 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."[17]

But, it may be argued, vague sympathy with the lower animals is one thing, and a definite recognition of their " rights " is another ; what reason is there to suppose that we shall advance from the former phase to the latter? Just this; that every great liberating movement 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 concession of "rights" is simply a matter of time. The present condition of the more highly organized 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 : " 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 friendship, 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."[18] "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.''[19]

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 cannot, in all cases, suddenly relax these habits, or do full justice even where we see that justice will have to be done. A perfect ethic of 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 encouragement of humanitarian workers, that these obstacles 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 impossible ; 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 beginning. The persons who offer this futile sort 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 request 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 sufficient general knowledge of his course and destination.

Our main principle is now clear. If " rights " exist at all—and both feeling and usage indubitably 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,[20] " 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 possibly be answered by it, but merely to exhibit power or gratify malice, is Cruelty and Injustice 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 instrument for the attainment of human welfare. It is, per-haps, a mere coincidence, but it has been observed that those who are most forward 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 be lauded 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 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 beginning to explain to us, in a scientific manner, what we untutored humanitarians had previously 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.[21]

The charge of " sentimentalism " is frequently brought against those who plead for animals' rights. Now "sentimentalism," 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 ; 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 towards 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 disagreeable to confront.

Once more then, animals have rights, and these rights consist in the ''restricted freedom" 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 community. 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 we must kill, whether it be man or animal, let us kill and have done with it; if we must inflict 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 is necessary ; let us not wantonly trade on the needless miseries of other beings, and then attempt to lull our consciences by a series of shuffling excuses which cannot endure a moment'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 possibility of its better observance in the future.

Chapter II

The Case of Domestic Animals

the main principle of animals' rights, if admitted 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 extent and importance. It is convenient, however, to consider the subject of the domestic animals apart from that of the wild ones, inasmuch 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 dealings with vast races of beings, the very conditions of whose existence have been modified by human civilization.

An incalculable mass of drudgery, at the cost of incalculable suffering, is daily, hourly 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 community 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.[22]

But the human mind is subtle to evade the full significance of its duties, and nowhere is this more conspicuously seen than in our treatment 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 certainty) 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 themselves.'' The wish is father to the thought in 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 standard (sic) probably one of almost perfect happiness."[23]

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 opportune 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 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.[24] An abstract question of this sort, however interesting 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 dispense 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, 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 feræ naturæ, 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 betaken to mean any horse, mare, gelding, 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 considerable importance since it closely affects the welfare of certain animals which, though at present regarded as wild, and therefore outside 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 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 immunity from ill-usage. " We owe justice to men," wrote Montaigne, " and grace and benignity 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."[25]

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 the mule, is from beginning to end a rude negation of their individuality and intelligence ; 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.[26]

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 for these facts, as ! showing that the current of English 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 thoroughfares 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 with a large degree of sensibility and intelligence, must one not feel that the fate to which they are thus mercilessly subjected 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 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 superannuated 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 æsthetic 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,[27] "and men made the elements their servants for noble 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.[28] Let anyone who doubts this pay a visit to a cattle-market, and study the scenes that are enacted there.

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 precise amount of truth I cannot pretend to determine—that man would not otherwise be able to maintain his dominion over the domestic 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 increase 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 may offer a fainter resistance to rebellious nature." In all its aspects, this is a disagreeable 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;[29] 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 experimental 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 Quincey was in the main correct, when he remarked that "the groans and screams of 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 homeless.

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 kindness; so much easier it is 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 mere 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 useless 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 and the same origin—the fixed belief that the life of a " brute " has no "moral purpose," no distinctive personality worthy of due consideration and development. In a society where the lower animals were regarded as intelligent beings, 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. Waiving, 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 services 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 universal rights they possess in common with all intelligent beings, domestic animals have a special claim on man's courtesy and sense of 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 animalium. It is of the utmost importance to emphasize the fact that, whatever the legal fiction may have been, or may still be, the rights of animals are not morally dependent on the so-called rights of property ; it is not to owned animals merely that we I must extend our sympathy and protection.

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 of ownership.[30] This monstrous iniquity, so far as relates to the domestic animals, has now been removed; but the only direct legal protection 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 " property " 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 unmolested 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 supremacy of man; but we are not justified in unnecessarily 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. Nothing is more difficult than to determine precisely 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 degradation.

In the same way, while admitting that man is justified, by the exigencies of his own destiny, 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,[31] "undoubtedly justify us in destroying those animals who would destroy us, who injure our properties or annoy our persons; but not even these, whenever their situation incapacitates 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 subsequent 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 domestic and the wild. Is the imprisonment of such animals a violation of the principle we have laid down ? In most cases I fear this question can only be answered in the affirmative.

And here, once more I must protest against the common assumption that these captive animals are laid under an obligation to man by the very fact of their captivity, and that therefore 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,[32] " 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 contended that a menagerie is a sort of paradise for wild beasts, whose loss of liberty is more than compensated by the absence of the constant 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[33] that the life of a domestic animal is " one of very great comfort, 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.[34] 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 who go to the gardens on a half-holiday afternoon 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, instead of immuring them in lifelong imprisonment, would be at once a humaner and a cheaper method, and could not possibly be of less use to science.[35]

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 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 imbecility. 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 reprobation. 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 unwillingness 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 bird-catcher's shop are alike full of horrors, and they are horrors which are due entirely to a silly fashion and a habit of callous thoughtlessness, 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 automata. The key to a proper understanding of the wild, as of the tame, animals must always lie in such sympathies—sympathies, as Wordsworth 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 calm 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 adequate or conclusive which ignores, as many so-called humanitarians still ignore, the immense 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 uncivilized 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 increased after the early conditions which produced it had passed away. What is more important to note, is that the very prevalence of the habit has caused it to be regarded as a necessary feature of modern civilization, and that this view has inevitably had a marked 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 propose to make a meal, a difficulty which has not been at all satisfactorily surmounted by those moralists who, while accepting the practice 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 conduct," 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.[36] Hence a disposition 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 6f life," says Bentham, in a delightfully naive application of the utilitarian philosophy, "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 unforeseen 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, " remained 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 discarding 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 restraining 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 extremely lame, since animals have no power to support life by any other means, and since we have, for the whole human species might subsist 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 constantly repeating itself in the attitude of our moralists and philosophers towards the victims 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 argument.''

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 ! 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."[37]

Meantime, 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 imagined. 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 support 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, 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 advocate the cause of vegetarianism; but in view of the mass of evidence, readily obtainable,[38] that the transit and slaughter of animals are necessarily attended by most atrocious cruelties, 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 consideration is playing with the question of animals' rights. Fifty or a hundred years ago, there was 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 increased necessity of transporting animals long distances by sea and land, under conditions 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."[39]

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 j 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 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 constituting ourselves the spokesmen and the interpreters of our victims. Mr. E. B. Nicholson, 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." [40] Unfortunately for the soundness of this suspiciously partial assumption, there is no recorded 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 which is good, or bad, or in any way comparable 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 references 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 aspects 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 carnivora are bred, and fed, and from the first predestined 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 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."[41]

That those who are aware of the horrors involved in slaughtering, and also aware of the possibility of a flesh-less 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 passage is quoted from a " Plea for Mercy to Animals,"[42] as a typical instance of the sort of perverted sentiment to which I allude. " Not in superstitions 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 persons, who object to the use of animal food, not on the ground of health only, but as involving 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 "justice" (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 necessity, 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 question is more and more discussed, the result will be more and more decisive. "Whatever my own practice may be," wrote Thoreau, " I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the 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, however, 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 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 stupidity indeed ! Wisely did Wordsworth inculcate 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 callousness and insensibility; the sportsman, by force of habit, or by force of hereditary influence, cannot understand or sympathize with the sufferings he causes, and being, in the great majority 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 excuse; 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 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 barbarities of the Roman amphitheatre. To exterminate 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.[43] 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 brought 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 predaceous 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,[44] " on a superior being who, without provocation or advantage, should continue from day to day, void of all pity and remorse, to torment mankind 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 devoted 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 situation, we must acknowledge that, with regard to the inferior animals, just such a being is the sportsman."

The excuses alleged in favour of English field-sports in general, and of hunting in particular, 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 unmanly, 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 effect of those field-sports which bring men into contact with the sublimities of nature, I will only repeat what I have elsewhere 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 Atlantic."[45]

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, unmindful 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 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."[46]

The case is even worse when the quarry is to all intents and purposes domesticated, an animal wild by nature, but by force of circumstances 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.[47] 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 domesticated 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.[48]

The same must be said of some sports which are practised by the English working-man—rabbit-coursing, in particular, that half-holiday diversion which is so popular in many villages of the north.[49] 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 excuses 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 was long ago remarked by Martin, the author of the famous Act of 1822, that such an argument 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 contemptuous 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 victims 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 inexcusable outrage on such rights. Yet there are no means of redressing these barbarities, because the laws, such as they are, which prohibit cruelty to animals, are not designed to take any cognizance of " vermin."

All that has been said of hunting and coursing is applicable also—in a less degree, perhaps, 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 yelping hounds, or shoot him with a gun, or drag him from his native waters by a hook ; the point at issue is simply whether man is justified in inflicting any form of death or suffering on the lower races for his mere amusement 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 injustice 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,'[50]" 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 and mown down in a peculiarly brutal manner? ... A perfect roar of guns fills the air, louder tap and yell the beaters, above the din can be heard the heart-rendering 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 eradicate."

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 regarded as mere irrational automata, with no higher destiny than to satisfy the most artificial wants or the most cruel caprices of mankind. 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 substance which is obtainable without injury to the animal from which it is taken.

It is evident that in this case, as in the butchering trade, the responsibility for whatever wrongs are done must rest ultimately on the class which demands an unnecessary commodity, 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, however, that such changes do not come about with suddenness, but, on the contrary, with the extremest 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 vegetable or mineral kingdom.

Take the case of leather, for instance, a material which is in almost universal use, and may, under present circumstances, be fairly described as a necessary. 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 bootmaking, 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-eat-ing 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 now, 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 anticipation, against a very plausible argument, by which discredit is often cast on the whole theory of animals' rights. What can be the object, it is said, of entering on the sentimental path of an impossible humanitarianism, which only leads into insurmountable difficulties and dilemmas, inasmuch as the use of these various animal substances is so interwoven 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 where 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— assuming the skins of the wild creatures he has conquered ; but it does 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 manufacturer ?

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 gentlemen 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? 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 transformed and degraded by the way—boiled down, like the beaver, into a hat, or, like the seal, into a lady's jacket ?[51]

Whatever it may be in other respects, the fur trade, in so far as it is a supply of ornamental clothing for those who are under no necessity of wearing fur at all, is a barbarous and stupid business. It makes patchwork, 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 significant 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.

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 remark made by a writer in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," that "to enumerate all the feathers used for ornamental purposes would be practically to give a complete list of all known and obtainable birds." The figures and details published by those humane writers who have raised an unavailing protest against this latest and worst crime of Fashion are simply appalling in their stern and naked record of unremitting cruelty.

" One dealer in London is said to have received 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 Indian, besides thousands of pheasants and birds-of-paradise.''[52] The meaning of such statistics is simply that the women of Europe and America have given an order for the ruthless extermination of birds.[53]

It is not seriously contended in any quarter that this wholesale destruction, effected often in the most revolting and heartless manner,[54] 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.[55]

In saying this I do not of course mean to imply that special efforts should not be directed 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. Unfortunately 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 pursuing it, is due, in most cases, to an obtuse-ness 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 offspring 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 whatsoever ; to sport, the meed of unique and unparalleled brutality ; while the patrons of murderous millinery afford the most marvellous instance of the capacity the human mind possesses for ignoring its personal responsibilities. To re-apply Keats's words :