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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1785-1837] Romantic Age » William Ellery Channing

William Ellery Channing

Memoirs: Letter on Inhumanity to Animals

[c1798] William Ellery Channing, "Letter on Inhumanity Towards Animals [c1798]" in Memoir of William Ellery Channing with Extracts from His Correspondence and Manuscripts, edited by William Henry Channing (Boston, 1848; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks).

This work is an autobiography, in so far as the materials at my command have enabled me to give it that character, and consists of extract from private papers, sermons, and letters, with remarks only interwoven as seemed appropriate for purposes of illustration—William Henry Channing

The same gentle and kind disposition manifested itself in his treatment of animas, as, in a letter written soon after he leaving college, he thus himself declares:—

Thanks to my stars, I can say I have never killed a bird. I would not crush the meanest insect which crawls upon the ground. They have the same right to live that I have, they received it from the same Father, and I will not mar the works of God by wanton cruelty. (39)

I can remember an incident in my childhood, which has given a turn to my whole life and character. I found a nest of birds in my father's field, which held four young ones. They had no down when I fist discovered them. They opened their little mouths as if they were hungry, and I gave them some crumbs which were in my pocket. Every day I returned to feed them. AS soon as school was done, I would run home for some bread, and sit by the nest to see them eat, for an hour at a time. They were now feathered, and almost ready to fly. They were not feathered, and almost ready to fly. When I came one morning, I found them all cut up into quarters. The grass around the nest was red with blood. Their little limbs were raw and bloody. The mother was on a tree, and the father on the wall, mourning for their young. I cried, myself, for I was a child. I thought, too, that the parents looked on me as the author of their miseries, and this made me still more unhappy. I wanted to undeceive them. I wanted to sympathize with and comfort them. When I left the field, they followed me with their eyes and with mournful reproaches. I was too young and too sincere in my grief to make any apostrophes. But I can never forget my feelings. The impression will never be worn away, nor can I ever cease to abhor every species of inhumanity towards inferior animals. (37-38)

In connection with this letter, and as illustrating his sympathy with the lower creation, it is remembered that he reared, while quite young, a brood of chickens, devoting himself to them with the tenderness care; and that one, seeing in a trap some rats which were to be drowned, he was so much affected by their evident distress, that he open the door and let them go. —William Henry Channing