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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1660-1785] Enlightenment » Quotes-Slavery of Animals

Timeline of Quotes Against Slavery of Animals

Quotes Against Slavery of Animals in Historical Literature; Analogies to Human Slavery, Animal Slavery-Servitude, Animal as Slaves

Quotes-Slavery of Animals: Enlightenment

[1728] James Thomson:
Be not the Muse asham'd, here to bemoan
Her Brothers of the Grove, by Tyrant Man
Inhuman caught, and in the narrow Cage
From Liberty confin'd, and boundless Air.
Dull are the pretty Slaves

In pleading against the sin of cruelty to brute animals in his dissertation, Humphrey Primatt becomes one of the first to "plead the cause of that portion of the human race who have been treated worse than brutes"¹.

[1776] Humphrey Primatt: It has pleased God, to cover some men with white skins, and others with black; but as there is neither merit nor demerit in complexion, the while man, notwithstanding the barbarity of custom and prejudice, can have no right by virtue of his color to enslave and tyrannize over the black man. For whether a man be white or black, such he is by God's appointment, and, abstractly considered, is neither a subject for pride nor an object of contempt. …Now if amongst men, the differences of their powers of the mind, and of their complexion, stature, and accidents of fortune, do not give any one man a right to abuse or insult any other man on account of these differences; for the same reason, a man can have no natural right to abuse and torment a beast, merely because a beast does not have the mental powers of a man.—

[1777] Samuel Jackson Pratt: But though all things are in subjection, nothing was born to slavery.