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 » Spectator Magazine

Francis Orpen Morris

Case of Cruelty, A Sermon

[1872] Rev. F. O. Morris, "The Curse of Cruelty, Sermon 201," in Plain Sermons for Plain People, (London, 1872; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks).

[1886] Rev. F. O. Morris, The Curse of Cruelty: A Sermon Preached in York Minster, at the Nave Service, Sunday Evening, May 9, 1886 (London, 1886; Google Books: Online Library of Free eBooks: Bibliographic Information).

It is a wretched thing to see them with little more than room to turn round, vainly trying to get out into the open air, and to join their companions in the green fields. One cannot help thinking when one sees a poor bird thus miserably confined, of the poor starling told of in Stern's "Sentimental Journey" which kept calling out behind the bars of its cage, "I can't get out! I can't get out!"

And what language can be too strong for those "falsely called" men of science who under pretence of advantage to the human races make their experiments on living animals. They are useless, and for that very reason worse than useless, because they have been tried often and more than enough before. And even if it was not so, it stands to reason that under the circumstances they cannot be safely depended d on. This many of the most eminent medical men have declared and asserted over and over again. These men have a "lie in their right hand" when they pretend to exalted benevolence, and are all the while "past feeling." If they are in earnest and sincere in their profession of a desire for the benefit of mankind, let them offer themselves a sacrifice at the shrine of science. "For a good man would even dare to die, and "Dulce est pro patria mori"; but let them not even go so far as to give their lives; let them offer themselves to be experimented on, but only so far as their brethren standing by will say they are able to bear, short of death. They know, and cannot deny that an experiment on a man himself must be more valuable for other men than one on a different creature; so let them, I say, offer themselves, in turns, each to the other, for experimenting on, and when they have sufficiently recovered form one operation, let them come forward with alacrity for another, for the good of the public. No one will ever say nay to their doing so. Their practice will be much more to their credit than their cant about their love of science.