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Clergyman of the Church of England

1824 | A Clergyman of the Church of England, A Sermon on the Unjustifiableness of Cruelty to the Brute Creation, and the Obligation we are Under to Treat it with Lenity and Compassion (London: Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 1824); Online at Animal Rights History, 2003.

A Sermon on the Unjustifiableness of Cruelty to the Brute Creation

The wise man calls upon us to "open our mouths." The "dumb," in whose cause we are required to do this, are the unhappy victims of their lawless cruelty and oppression; wretches, who have no kind advocate to plead in behalf of their invaded rights; no helping hand to procure for them redress from their furious assailants; no friend to truth, ready, or willing, to expose the cunning devices wherewith they have been entrapped.—Well may they be called "dumb," since their tongues can be of no avail to them, when silenced by the imperiousness of wealth, the dread of irritating, by a vain appeal to justice, those under whose hands they have already groaned, to still further acts of violence, and their utter inability to baffle the false gloss with which the vile schemes of their adversaries have deluded them.

What they have it not in their power to utter for themselves, justice is ever ready to proclaim for them. By acts of cruelty, or an unfeeling inattention to the relief of their wants and distresses, we violate that branch of it which is distinguished by the endearing title of Mercy and Compassion; we debase our nature by betraying a savageness of disposition, that sinks us below a level with the placid and gentle race over which we unwarrantably tyrannise.

But, can we conceive it to be allowable for us wantonly to sacrifice quiet and harmless reptiles, merely because the shape and figure which it has pleased the God of Nature to stamp upon them, are loathsome in our eyes? The "bloated toad," the "slimy snail," and "unsightly beetle," have not all these, their feelings, as we have ours? Are they not the work of the same Almighty hand by which we likewise were framed? And are not their lives entitled to preservation, and freedom from misery, equally with our own?

Let us "open our mouths" for those "dumb," but significant and friendly clients: let us make up, by every plea which we can urge in their favour, what their own tongues are unable to express: let the wailings and moans, with which they implore our assistance, operate as the strongest arguments on our feeling, commiserating minds. Oh! let us not be "dumb" ourselves, but loud in their defence.