Animal Rights Quotes • Law • Humane Education • Historical Literature eBook Library: Free Full-Text eBooks • Primary Sources
Activists Against Cruelty to Animals: A » B » C » D » E » F » G » H » I » J » K » L » M » N » O » P » Q » R » S » T » U » V » W » X » Y » Z

Animal Rights History Timeline » [1837-1901] Victorian Age » William Ellery Channing

William Ellery Channing

An Address Delivered at Oxford, On the Anniversary of Emancipation in the British West Indies

[1842-Aug-01] William Ellery Channing, "An Address Delivered at Lenox; On the Anniversary of Emancipation in the British West Indies, August 1, 1842," in The Complete Works of William Ellery Channing: Including the Perfect Life and Containing a Copious General Index and a Table of Scripture References (New York and London, 1884; Kessinger Publishing, 2006; Online Preview at Google Books) 627-637;

The domestic slave is well fed, we are told, and so are the domestic animals. A nobleman's horse in England is better lodged and more pampered than the operatives in Manchester. The grain which the horse consumes might support a starving family. How sleek and shinning his coat! How gay and rich his comparison! But why is he thus curried, and pampered, and bedecked? To be bitted and curbed; and them to be mounted by his master, who arms himself with whip and spur to put the animal to his speed; and if any accident mar his strength or swiftness, he is sold from his luxuriant stall to be flayed, overworked, and hastened out of life by the merciless drayman. Suppose the nobleman should say to the half-starved, ragged operative of Manchester, "I will give up my horse, and feed and clothe you with the sumptuousness, on condition that I may mount you daily with lash and spurs, and sell you when I can make a profitable bargain." Would you have the operative, for the sake of good fare and clothes, take the lot of the brute? Or, in other words, become a slave? What reply would the hear of an Old-England or New-England labourer make to such a proposal? And yet, if there be any soundness in the argument drawn from the slave's comforts, he ought to accept it thankfully and greedily. Such arguments for slavery are insults.…Be the comforts of a slave what they may, there are no compensation for the degradation, insolence, indignities, ignorance, servility, scars, and violations of domestic rights to which he is exposed. (629)