Animal Rights History » Henry Salt

» Animals' Rights, "Lines of Reform"

Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, Considered in Relation to Social Progress, with a Bibliographical Appendix (London & New York, 1892; Print Basis for the Online Edition: London & New York: 1894; Online at Animal Rights History, 2003).

CHAPTER VIII.

LINES OF REFORM

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

But my main purpose was to deal with a general theory rather than with particular instances; and enough has already been said to show that while man has much cause to be grateful to the lower animals were the innumerable services rendered by them, you can hardly pride himself on the record of the counter-benefits which they have received at his hands. "If we consider," says Primatt, "the excruciating injuries offered on our part to the brutes, and the patience on their part; how frequent our provocation, and how seldom their resentment (and in some cases our weakness and their strength,[84] our slowness and their swiftness) one would be almost tempted to suppose that the brutes had combined in one general scheme of benevolence, to teach mankind lessons of mercy and meekness by their own forbearance longsuffering."

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

The terrible sufferings that are quite needlessly inflicted on the lower animals under the plea of domestic usage, food-demands, sport, fashion, and science, are patent to all who have the seeing eye and the feeling heart to apprehend them; those sufferings will not be lessened, nor will man's responsibility be diminished by any such irrelevant assertions as that vivisection is less cruel than sport, or sport less cruel than butchering,—nor yet by the contrary contention that vivisection, or sport, or flesh-eating, as the case may be, is the one prime origin of all human inhumanity. We want a comprehensive [85] principle which will cover all these varying instances, and determine the true lines of reform.

Such a principle, as I have throughout insisted, can only be found in the recognition of the right of animals, as of men, to be exempt from any unnecessary suffering or serfdom, the right to live a natural life of "restricted freedom," subject to the real, not supposed or pretended, requirements of the general community. It may be said, and with truth, that the perilous vagueness of the word "necessary" must leave a convenient loop-hole of escape to anyone who wishes to justify his own treatment of animals, however unjustifiable that treatment may appear; the vivisector will assert that his practice is necessary in the interests of science, the flesh-eater that he cannot maintain his health without animal food, and so on through the whole category of systematic oppression.

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

For that the difficulties involved in this animal question [86] question are many and serious, no one, I imagine, would dispute, and certainly no attempt has been made or will be made, in this essay to minimize or deny them. It may suit the purpose of those who would retard all humanitarian progress to represent its advocates as mere dreamers and sentimentalists—men and women who befool themselves by shutting their eyes to the fierce struggle that is everywhere being waged in the world of nature, while they point with virtuous indignation to the iniquities perpetrated by man. But it is impossible to be quite free from any such sentimental illusions, and yet to hold a very firm belief of the principle of animals' rights. We do not deny, or attempt to explain away, the existence of evil in nature, or the fact that the life of the lower races, as of mankind, is based to a large degree on rapine and violence; nor can we pretend to say whether this evil will be wholly amended. It is therefore confessedly impossible, at the present time, to formulate an entirely and logically consistent philosophy of rights; but that would be a poor argument against grappling with the subject at all.

The hard unmistakable facts of the situation, when viewed in their entirety, are not by any means calculated to inspire with confidence the opponents of humane reform. For, if it be true that the internecine competition is a great factor in the economy of nature, it is no less true, as has already been already pointed out, that co-operation is also a great factor therein. Furthermore, though there are many difficulties besetting the onward path of humanitarianism, an even greater difficulty has to be faced by [87] those who refuse to proceed along that path, viz., the fact—as strong a fact as any that can be produced on the other side—the instinct of compassion and justice to the lower animals has already been so largely developed by the human conscience as to obtain legislative recognition. If the theory of animals' right is a mere idealistic phantasy, it follows that we have long ago committed ourselves to a track which can lead us no whither. Is it then proposed that we should retrace our steps, with a view to regaining the antique position of savage and consistent callousness; or are we to remain perpetually in our present meaningless attitude, admitting the moral values of a partially awakened sensibility, yet opposing an eternal non possumusto any further improvement? Neither of these alternatives is for a moment conceivable; it is perfectly certain that there will still be a forward movement, and along the same lines as in the past.

Nor need we be at all disconcerted by the derisive enquiries of our antagonist as to the final outcome of such theories. "There is some reason to hope," said the author of the ironical "Vindication of the Rights of Brutes," "that this essay will soon be followed by treatises on the rights of vegetables and minerals, and that thus the doctrine of perfect equality will become universal." To which suggestion we need only answer, "Perhaps." It is for each age to initiate its own ethical reforms, according to the light and sensibility of its own instincts; farther and more abstruse questions, at present insoluble, may safely be left to the more mature judgment of prosperity. The human conscience furnishes the safest and [88] simplest indicator in these matters. We know that certain acts of injustice affect us as they did not affect our forefathers—it is our duty to set these right. It is not our duty to agitate problems, which, at the present day, excite no unmistakable moral feeling.

The humane instinct will assuredly continue to develop. And it should be observed that to advocate the rights of animals is far more than to plead for compassion or justice towards the victims of ill-usage; it is not only, and not primarily, for the sake of the victims that we plead, but for the sake of mankind itself. Our true civilisation, our race-progress, our humanity (in the best sense of the term) are concerned in this development; it is ourselves, our own vital instincts, that we wrong, when we trample the rights of the fellow-beings, human or animal, over whom we chance to hold jurisdiction. It has been admirably said^88*1 that, "terrible as is the lot of the subjects of cruelty and injustice, that of the perpetrators is even worse, by reason of the debasement and degradation of character implied and incurred. For the principles of Humanity cannot be renounced with impunity; but their renunciation, if persisted in, involves inevitably the forfeiture of Humanity itself. And to cease through such forfeiture to be man is to become demon."

This most important point is constantly overlooked by the opponents of humanitarian reform. They labour, unsuccessfully enough, to minimize the complaints of the animals' wrongs, on the plea that these wrong, though [89] great, are not so great as to be represented to be, and that in any case it is not possible, or not urgently desirable, for man to alleviate them. As if human interests were not ultimately bound up in every such compassionate endeavour ! The case against injustice to animals stands, in this respect, on exactly the same grounds as that against injustice to man, and may be illustrated by some suggestive words of De Quincey's in the typical subject of corporal punishment. This practice, he remarks, "is usually argued with a single reference to the case of him who suffers it; and so argued, God knows that it is worthy of all abhorrence : but the weightiest argument against it is the foul indignity which is offered to our common nature lodged in the person of him on whom it is inflicted."

And this brings us back to the moral of the whole matter. The idea of Humanity is no longer confined to man; it is beginning to extend itself to the lower animals, as in the past it has been gradually extended to savages and slaves. "Behold the animals. There is not one but the human soul lurks within it, fulfilling its destiny as surely as within you." So writes the author of "Toward Democracy;" and what has long been felt by the poet is now being scientifically corroborated by the anthropologist and philosopher. "The standpoint of modern thought," say Büchner,^89*1 "no longer recognises in animals a difference of kind, but only of difference of degree, and sees the principle of intelligence developing through an endless and unbroken series."

[90] It is noteworthy that, on this point, evolutionary science finds itself in agreement with Oriental tradition. "The doctrine of metempsychosis," says Strauss,^90*1 "knits men and beasts together here [in the East], and unites the whole of Nature in once sacred and mysterious bond. The breach between the two was opened in the first place by Judaism, with its hatred of the Gods of Nature, next by the dualism of Christianity. It is remarkable that at present a deeper sympathy with the animal world should have arisen among the more civilized nations, which manifests itself here and there in societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals. it is thus apparent that what on the one hand is the product of modern science—the giving up of spiritualistic isolation of man from Nature—reveals itself simultaneously through the channel of popular sentiment."

It is not human life only that is lovable and sacred, but all innocent beautiful life : the great republic of the future will not confine its beneficence to man. The isolation of man from Nature, by our persistent culture of the ratiocinative faculty, and our persistent neglect of the instinctive, has hitherto been the penalty we have had to pay for our incomplete and partial "civilization;" there are many signs that the tendency will now be towards that "Return to Nature" of which Rousseau was the prophet. But let it not for a moment be supposed that an acceptance of the gospel of Nature implies an abandonment or depreciation of intellect—on the contrary, it is the assertion that reason itself [91] can never be at its best, can never be truly rational, except when it is in perfect harmony with the deep-seated emotional instincts and sympathies which underlie all thought.

The true scientist and humanist is he who will reconcile brain to heart, and show us how, without any sacrifice of what we have gained in knowledge, we many resume what we have temporarily lost during the process of acquiring that knowledge—the sureness of intuitive faculty which is originally implanted in men and animals alike. Only by this return to the common fount of feeling will it be possible for man to place himself in right relationship towards the lower animals, and to break down the fatal barrier of antipathy that he has himself erected. If we contrast the mental and moral attitude of the generality of mankind towards the lower races with that of such men as St. Francis or Thoreau, we see what far-reaching possibilities still lie before us on this line of development, and what an immense extension is even now waiting to be given to our most advanced ideas of social unity and brotherhood.

I have already remarked on the frequent and not altogether unjustifiable complaint against "lovers of animals," that they are often indifferent to the struggle for human rights, while they concern themselves so eagerly over the interests of the lower races. Equally true is the converse statement, that many earnest reformers and philanthropists, men who have a genuine passion for human liberty and progress, are coldly skeptical or even bitterly hostile on the subject of the rights of animals. [92] This organic limitation of sympathies must be recognised and regretted, but it is worse than useless for the one class of reformers to indulge in blame or recrimination against the other. It is certain that they are both working towards the same ultimate end; and if they cannot actually co-operate, they may at least refrain from unnecessary thwarting and opposing each other.

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

The advent of democracy, imperfect though any democracy must be which does not embrace all living things which within its scope, will be of enormous assistance to the cause of animals' rights, for under the present unequal and inequitable social system there is no possibility [93] of those claims receiving their due share of attention. In the rush and hurry of a competitive society, where commercial profit is avowed to be the main object of work, and where the well-being of men and women is ruthlessly sacrificed to that object, what likelihood is there that the lower animals will not be used with a sole regard to the same predominant purpose? Humane individuals may here and there protest, and the growing conscience of the public may express itself in legislation against the worst forms of palpable ill-usage, but the bulk of the people simply cannot, and will not, afford to treat animals as they ought to be treated. Do the wealthy classes show any such consideration? Let "amateur butchery" and "murderous millinery" be the answer. Can it be wondered, then, that the "lower classes," whose own rights are existent far more in theory than in fact, should exhibit a feeing of stolid indifference to rights of the still lower animals?

It has been said that, "If in a mob of Londoners, Parisians, New Yorkers, Berliners, Melbourners, a dove fluttered down to seek a refuge, a hundred dirty hands would be stretched out to seize it, and wring its neck; and if anyone tried to save and cherish it, he would be rudely bonneted, and mocked, and hustled amidst the brutal guffaws of roughs, lower and more hideous in aspect and in nature than any animal which lives."^93*1 This may be so; yet it must also be remembered that it is not the people, but the lords, who have hitherto prevented the suppression, in England at any rate, of the[94] infamous pastime of pigeon-shooting. It is to the democracy, and the democratic sense of kinship and brotherhood, extending first to mankind, and then to lower races, that we must look for future progress. The emancipation of men will bring with it another and still wider emancipation—of animals.

In conclusion we are brought face to face with this practical problem—by what immediate means can we best provide for the attainment of the end we have in view? What are the surest remedies for the present wrongs, and the surest pledges for the future rights, of the victims of human supremacy? The answer, I think, must be that there are two pre-eminently important methods which are sometimes regarded as contradictory in principle, but which, as I hope to show, are not only quite compatible, but even mutually serviceable and to some degree inter-dependent. We have no choice but to work by one or the other of these methods, and, if we are wise, we shall endeavor to work by both simultaneously, using the first as our chief instrument of reform, the second as auxiliary and supplementary instrument. These two methods to which I look allude are the educational and legislative.

I. Education, in the largest sense of the term, has always been, and must always remain, the antidote and indispensable condition of humanitarian progress. Very excellent are the words of John Bright on this subject (let us forget for the nonce that he was an angler.) "Humanity to animals is a great point. If I were a teacher in school, I would make it a very important [95] part of my business to impress every boy and girl with the duty of his or her being kind to all animals. It is impossible to say how much suffering there is in the world from the barbarity or unkindness which people show to what we call the inferior creatures."

It may be doubted, however, whether the young will ever be specially impressed with the lesson of humanity as long as the general tone of their elders and instructors is one of cynical indifference, if not an absolute hostility, to the recognition of animal' rights.^95*1 It is society as a whole, and not one class in particular, that needs enlightenment and remonstrance; in fact, the very conception and scope of what is known as "liberal education" must be revolutionized and extended. For if we find fault with the narrow and unscientific spirit of what is known as "science," we must in fairness admit that our academic "humanities," the literæ humaniores of colleges and schools, together with much of our modern culture and refinement, are scarcely less deficient in that quickening spirit of sympathetic brotherhood, without which all the accomplishments that the mind of man can devise are as the borrowed cloak of an imperfectly realized civilization, assumed by some barbarous tribe but half emerged from savagery This divorce of "humanism" from humaneness is one of the subtlest dangers by which society is beset; for, if we grant that love needs [96] to be tempered and directed by wisdom, still more needful is it that wisdom should be informed and vitalized by love.

It is therefore not only our children who need to be educated in the proper treatment of animals, but our scientists, religionists, our moralists, and our men of letters. For in spite of the vast progress of humanitarian ideas during the present century, it must be confessed that the popular exponents of western thought^96*1 are still for the most part quite unable to appreciate the profound truth of the words of Rousseau, which should form the basis of an enlightened system of instruction : "Hommes, soyez humains! C'est votre premier devoir. Quelle sagesse y a-t-il pour vous, hors de l'humanité?"

But how is this vast educational change to be inaugurated—let alone accomplished? Like all far-reaching reforms which are promoted by a few believers in the face of public indifferentism, it can only be carried through by the energy and resolution of its supporters. [97] The efforts which the various humane societies are now making in special directions, each concentrating its attack on a particular abuse, must be supplemented and strengthened by a crusade—an intellectual, literary, and social crusade—against the central cause of oppression, viz. : the disregard of the natural kinship between man and the animals, and the consequent denial of their rights. We must insist on having the whole question fully considered and candidly discussed, and must no longer permit its most important issues to the shirked because it does not suit the convenience or prejudices of comfortable folk to give attention to them.

Above all, the sense of ridicule that at present attaches to the supposed "sentimentalism" of an advocacy of animals' rights must be faced and swept away. The fear of this absurd charge deprives the cause of humanity of many workers who would otherwise lend their aid, and accounts in part for the unduly diffident and apologetic tone which is too often adopted by humanitarians. We must meet this ridicule, and retort it without hesitation on those to whom it properly pertains. The laugh must be turned against the true "cranks" and "crotchet-mongers"—noodles who can give no wiser reason for the infliction of suffering on animals than that it is "better for the animals themselves"—the flesh-eaters who labour under the pious belief that animals were "sent" to us as food—the silly women who imagines that the corpse of a bird is a becoming article of head-gear—the half-witted sportsmen who vow that the vigour of the English race is dependent on the [98] practice of fox-hunting—and the half-enlightened scientists who are unaware that vivisection has moral and spiritual, no less than physical, consequences. That many of our arguments are mere superficial sword-play, and do not touch the profound emotional sympathies on which the cause of humanity rests, is a fact which does not lessen their controversial significance. For this is a case where those who take the sword shall perish by the sword; and the clever men-of-the-world who twit consistent humanitarians with sickly sentimentality may perhaps discover that they themselves—fixed as they are in an ambiguous and utterly untenable position—are the sickliest sentimentalists of all.

II. Legislation, where the protection of harmless animals is concerned, is the fit supplement and sequel to education, and the objections urged against if are for the most part unreasonable. It must inevitably fail in its purpose, say some; for how can the mere passing of a penal statute prevent the innumerable unwitnessed acts of cruelty and oppression which make up the great total of animal suffering? But the purpose of legislation is not merely thus preventive. Legislation is the record, the register, of the moral sense of the community; it follows, not precedes, the development of that moral sense, but nevertheless in its turn reacts on it, strengthens it, and secures it against the danger of retrocession. It is well that society should proclaim, formally and decisively, its abhorrence of certain practices; and I do not think it can be doubted, by those who have studied the history of the movement, that the general treatment [99] of domestic animals in England, bad as it still is, would be infinitely worse at this day but for the progressive and punitive legislation that dates from the passing of "Martin's Act" in 1822.

The further argument, so commonly advanced, that "force is no remedy," and that it is better to trust to the good feeling of mankind than to impose a legal restriction, is an amiable criticism which might doubtless be applied with great effect to a large majority of our existing penal enactments, but it is not very applicable to the case under discussion. For if force is ever allowable, surely it is so when it is applied for a strictly defensive purpose, such as to safeguard the weak and helpless from violence and aggression. The protection of animals by statute marks but another step onward in that course of humanitarian legislation which, amount numerous triumphs, has abolished slavery and passed the Factory Acts—always in the teeth of this same time-honoured but irrelevant objection that"force is no remedy." Equally fatuous is the assertion that the administrators of the law cannot be trusted to adjudicated between master and "beast." It was long ago stated by Lord Erskine that "to distinguish the severest discipline, for enforcing activity and commanding obedience in such dependents, from brutal ferocity and cruelty, never yet puzzled a judge or jury—never, at least, in my long experience."

Such arguments against the legal protection of animals were admirably refuted by John Stuart Mill. "The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children." [100 ] said, "apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind, the lower animals. It is by the grossest misunderstanding of the principles of Liberty that the infliction of exemplary punishment on ruffianism practised towards these defenceless beings has been treated as a meddling by Government with things beyond its province—an interference with domestic life. The domestic life of domestic tyrants is one of the things which it is most imperative on the Law to interfere with. And it is to be regretted that metaphysical scruples respecting the nature and source of the authority of governments should induce many warm supporters of laws against cruelty to the lower animals to seek for justification of such laws in the incidental consequences of the indulgence of ferocious habits to the interest of human beings, rather than in the intrinsic merits of the thing itself. What it would be the duty of a human being, possessed of the requisite physical strength, to prevent by force, if attempted in his presence, it cannot be less incumbent on society generally to repress. The existing laws of England are chiefly defective in the trifling—often almost nominal—maximum to which the penalty, even in the worst cases, is limited."^100*1

Let us turn now to the practical politics of the question, and consider in what instances we may suitably appeal for further legislative recognition of the rights of animals. Admitting that education must always precede law, and that we can only make penal those offences [101] which are already condemned by the better feeling of the nation, we are still bound to point out that in several particulars there is now urgent need of bringing the lagging influence of the legislature into a line with a rapidly advancing public opinion. It is possible that, in some cases, certain prevalent cruelties might be suppressed, without any change in the law, by magistrates and juries giving a wider interpretation to the rather vague wording of the existing statutes. If this cannot be done, the statutes themselves should be amended, so as to meet the larger requirements of a more enlightened national conscience.

There are not a few cruel practices, common in England at the present day, which are every whit as strongly condemned by thinking people as were bull-baiting and cock-fighting at the time of their prohibition in 1835. Foremost among these practices, because supported by the sanction of the State and carried on in the Queen's name, is the institution of the Royal Buckhounds.^101*1 It does not seem too much to demand that all worrying of tame or captured animals—whether of the stag turned out from a cart, the rabbit from a sack, or the pigeon from a cage—should be interpreted as equivalent to "baiting," and so brought within the scope of the Acts of 1835 and 1849. There is also need of extending to "vermin" some sort of protection against the wholly unnecessary tortures that are recklessly inflicted on them, and of abolishing or restricting the common use of the barbarous steel-trap.

[102] The exposure lately made^102*1 of the horrors of Atlantic cattle-ships—scenes that reproduce almost exactly the worst atrocities of the slaver—is likely to lead to some welcome improvement in the details of that lugubrious traffic. But this will not be sufficient in itself; for the cruelties committed in the slaughter, no less than in the transit, of "live-stock" call imperatively for some public cognizance and reprobation. The discontinuance, in our crowded districts, of all private slaughter-houses, and the substitution of public abattoirs under efficient municipal control, would do something to mitigate the worst features of the evil, and this reform should at once be pressed on the attention of local legislative bodies. Lastly, in this short list of urgent temporary measures, stands the question of vivisection; and here there can be no relaxation of the demand for total and unqualified prohibition.

But, when all is said, it remains true that legislation, important though it is, must ever be secondary to the awakening of the humane instincts; even education itself can only appeal with success to those whose minds are in some degree naturally predisposed to receive it. I have spoken of the desirability of an intellectual crusade against the main causes of the unjust treatment of animals; but I would not be understood to believe, as some humanitarians appear to do, that a hardened world might be miraculously converted by the preaching of a new St. Francis, if such a personality could be somehow evolved out of our nineteenth-century [103] commercialism!^103*1 In this infinitely complex modern society, great wrongs cannot be wholly righted by simple means, not even by the consuming enthusiasm of the prophet; since any particular form of injustice is but part and parcel of a far more deep-lying evil—the selfish, aggressive tendencies that are still so largely inherent in the human race.

Only with the gradual progress of an enlightened sense of equality shall we remedy these wrongs; and the object of our crusade should be not so much to convert opponents (who, by the very disabilities and limitations of their faculties, can never be really converted,) as to set the confused problem in a clear light, and at least discriminate unmistakably between our enemies and our allies. In all social controversies the issues are greatly obscured by the babel of names and phrases and cross-arguments that are bandied to and fro; so that many persons, who by natural sympathy and inclination are the friends of reform, are found to be ranked among its foes; while not a few of its foes, in similar unconsciousness, have strayed into the opposite camp. To state the issues distinctly, and so attract and consolidate a genuine body of support, is, perhaps, at the present time, the best service that humanitarians can render to the movement they wish to promote.

In conclusion, I would state emphatically that this essay is not an appeal ad misericordiam to those who themselves practise, or who condone in others, the deed against which a protest is here raised. It is not a plea for "mercy" (save the mark !) to the "brute beasts" [104] whose sole criminality consists in not belonging to the noble family of homo sapiens. It is addressed rather to those who see and feel that, as has been well said, "the great advancement of the world, throughout all ages, is to be measured by the increase of humanity and the decrease of cruelty"—that man, to be truly man, must cease to abnegate his common fellowship with all living nature—and that the coming realization of human rights will inevitably bring after it the tardier but not less certain realization of the rights of the lower races.

Footnotes

88*¹ Edward Maitland; Address to the Humanitarian League.

89*¹ "Mind in Animals," translated by Annie Besant.

90*¹ "The Old Faith and the New," translated by Mathilde Blind.

93*¹ Ouida, "Fortnightly Review," April, 1892.

95*¹ "The tell children, perhaps, that they must not be cruel to animals.…what avails all the fine talk about morality, in contrast with acts of barbarism and immorality presented to them on all sides?"—GUSTAV VON STRUVE.

96*¹ Eastern thought has always been far humaner than western, however deplorably in the East also practice may lag behind profession. In an interesting book lately published ("Man and Beast in India," by J. Lockwood Kipling), an extremely unfavourable account is given of the Hindoo treatment of animals. The alleged kindness of the natives, says the author, is nothing better than "a vague reluctance to take life by a sudden positive act," and "does not preserve the ox, the horse, and the ass from being unmercifully beaten, over-driven, over-laden, under-fed, and worked with sores under their harness." But he admits that "a more humane temper prevails with regard to free creatures than in the west"

100*¹ "Principles of Political Economy."

101*¹ See p. 58.

102*¹ "Cattle-ships" by Samuel Plimsoll, 1890.

103*¹ See article by Ouida, "Fortnightly Review," April, 1892.