Humanity Against Cruelty to Animals in Historical Literature, Timeline of Animal Rights History

Animal Rights History »» Henry Salt

1892 | Animals' Rights

Enlightened thinkers provide support for Salt's assertion that "animals as well as men…are possessed of a distinctive individuality, and, therefore are in justice entitled to live their lives with a due measure of that 'restricted freedom'" (06), "the right to live a natural life—a life, that is, which permits of the individual development—subject to the limitations imposed by the permanent needs and interests of the community" (22).

Quoting 19th century humanitarians, he underscores the fallacious reasoning in religious arguments: that animals are "without souls" (08), and those based on Descartes' theory that animals are mere "animated machines" and "have no moral purpose" (10). He admonishes the usage of such terms as "brute–beast" and "live–stock" which perpetuate the absurdity of a "lack of individuality" in animal creation, "ignor[ing] the fact that man is an animal no less than they" (14-15).

Applying this "general principle of animals' rights" (23) to issues relating to domestic (24) and wild animals (36), the use of animals for food (43), sport (53), fashion (63) and science (72), he proves the preposterousness of arguments supporting such cruelties. Addressing criticisms and demands of opponents, Salt offers encouragement to humanitarian workers and reformers (18). In conclusion, Salt argues that "to advocate the rights of animals is far more than to plead for compassion or justice towards the victims of ill-usage; but for the sake of mankind itself, our true civilisation, our race-progress, our humanity" (88).

The Principle of Animals' Rights

If we are ever going to do justice to the lower races…[we] must recognize the common bond of humanity that unites all living beings in one universal brotherhood. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Principle of Animals' Rights")

It is convenient of us men to be deaf to the entreaties of the victims of our injustice; and, by a sort of grim irony, we therefore assume that it is they who are afflicted by some organic incapacity—they are 'dumb animals,' forsooth ! although a moment's consideration must prove that they have innumerable ways, often quite human in variety and suggestiveness, of uttering their thoughts and emotions. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Principle of Animals' Rights")

The present condition of the more highly organized domestic animals is in many ways very analogous to that of the negro slaves of a hundred years ago: look back, and you will find in their case precisely the same exclusion from the common pale of humanity: the same hypocritical fallacies, to justify that exclusion; and, as a consequence, the same deliberate stubborn denial of their social 'rights'. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Principle of Animals' Rights")

If 'rights' exist at all—and both feeling and usage indubitably prove that they do exist—they cannot be consistency awarded to men and denied to animals, since the same sense of justice and compassion apply in both cases. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Principle of Animals' Rights")

Animals have rights, and these rights consist in the 'restricted freedom' to live a natural live a natural life—a life that is, which permits of the individual development—subject to the limitations imposed by the permanent needs and interests of the community. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Principle of Animals' Rights")

The Case of Domestic Animals

An incalculable mass of drudgery, at the cost of incalculable suffering, is daily, hourly performed for the benefit of man by these honest, patient labourers in every town and country of the world. Are these countless services to be permanently ignored in a community which makes any pretension to a humane civilization ? Will the free citizens of the enlightened republics of the future be content to reap the immense advantages of animals' labour, without recognizing that they owe them some consideration in return?…But the human mind is subtle to evade the full significance of its duties, and nowhere is this more conspicuously seen than in our treatment of the lower races…there is an accommodating elasticity in our social ethics that permits of the justification of almost any system which it would be inconvenient to us to discontinue. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Case of Domestic Animals")

We have taken the animals from a free, natural state, into an artificial thraldom, in order that we, and not they, may be the gainers thereby; it cannot possibly be maintained that they owe us gratitude on this account, or that this alleged debt may be used as a means of evading the just recognition of their rights.

The average life of our 'beasts of burden,' the horse, the ass, and the mule, is from beginning to end a rude negation of their individuality and intelligence; they are habitually addressed and treated as stupid instruments of man's will and pleasure, instead of the highly-organized and sensitive beings that they are. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Case of Domestic Animals")

Slavery is at all times hateful and iniquitous, whether it be imposed on mankind or on the lower races. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Case of Domestic Animals")

Apart from the universal rights they possess in common with all intelligent beings, domestic animals have a special claim on man's courtesy and sense of fairness, inasmuch as they are not his fellow-creatures only, but his fellow-workers, his dependents, and in many cases the familiar associates and trusted inmates of his home. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Case of Domestic Animals")

The Case of Wild Animals

To take a wild animal from its free natural state, full of abounding egoism and vitality, and to shut it up for the wretched remainder of its life in a cell where it has just space to turn round, and where it necessarily loses every distinctive feature of its character—this appears to me to be as downright a denial as could well be imagined of the theory of animals' rights. Nor is there very much force in the plea founded on the alleged scientific value of these zoological institutions, at any rate in the case of the wilder and less tractable animals, for it cannot be maintained that the establishment of wild-beast shows is in any way necessary for the advancement of human knowledge. For what do the good people see who go to the gardens on a half-holiday afternoon to poke their umbrellas at a blinking eagle-owl, or to throw dog-biscuits down the expansive throat of a hippopotamus? Not wild beasts or wild birds certainly, for there never have been or can be such in the best of all possible menageries, but merely the outer semblances and simulacra of the denizens of forest and prairie—poor spiritless remnants of what were formerly wild animals. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Case of Wild Animals")

It is sometimes contended that a menagerie is a sort of paradise for wild beasts, whose loss of liberty is more than compensated by the absence of the constant apprehension and insecurity which, it is conveniently assumed, weigh so heavily on their spirits. But all this notion of their "gaining by it" is in truth nothing more than a mere arbitrary supposition; for, in the first place, a speedy death may, for all we know, be very preferable to a protracted death-in-life; while, secondly, the pretence that wild animals enjoy captivity is even more absurd than the episcopal contention that the life of a domestic animal is "one of very great comfort, according to the animal's own standard". (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Case of Wild Animals")

If we desire to cultivate a closer intimacy with the wild animals, it must be an intimacy based on a genuine love for them as living beings and fellow-creatures, not on the superior power or cunning by which we can drag them from their native haunts, warp the whole purpose of their lives, and degrade them to the level of pets, or curiosities, or labour-saving automata. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Case of Wild Animals")

The Slaughter of Animals for Food

Comparative anatomy has shown that man is not carnivorous, but frugivorous, in his natural structure; experience has shown that flesh-food is wholly unnecessary for the support of healthy life. The importance of this more general recognition of a truth which has in all ages been familiar to a few enlightened thinkers, can hardly be over-estimated in its bearing on the question of animals' rights,… in view of the mass of evidence, readily obtainable, that the transit and slaughter of animals are necessarily attended by most atrocious cruelties, and that a large number of persons have for years been living healthily without the use of flesh-meat. Fifty or a hundred years ago, there was perhaps some excuse for supposing that vegetarianism was a mere fad; there is absolutely no such excuse at the present time. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Slaughter of Animals for Food")

Where the weaker animal is often the prey of the stronger…the weaker races at least live their own lives and take their chance in the game, whereas the victims of the human carnivora are bred, and fed, and from the first predestined to untimely slaughter, so that their whole mode of living is warped from its natural standard…it brings them into life for no better purpose than to deny their right to live. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Slaughter of Animals for Food")

Sport, or Amateur Butchery

Now, on the very face of it, this amateur butchery is, in one sense, the most wanton and indefensible of all possible violations of the principle of animals rights. If animals—or men for that matter—have of necessity to be killed, let them be killed accordingly ; but to seek one's own amusement out of the death-pangs of other beings, this is saddening stupidity indeed! (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "Sport, or Amateur Butchery")

The sporting instinct is due to sheer callousness and insensibility ; the sportsman, by force of habit, or by force of hereditary influence, cannot understand or sympathize with the sufferings he causes, and being, in the great majority of instances, a man of slow perception, he actually finds it much easier to follow the hounds than to follow an argument. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "Sport, or Amateur Butchery")

That "it would have to be killed anyhow" is a truly deplorable reason for torturing any animal whatsoever; it is an argument which would equally have justified the worst barbarities of the Roman amphitheater. To exterminate wolves, and other dangerous species, may, indeed, at certain places and times, be necessary and justifiable enough…but the sportsman nowadays "preserves" them (note the unintended humor of the term!), and then, by a happy afterthought, claims the gratitude of the animals themselves for his humane and benevolent interposition. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "Sport, or Amateur Butchery")

Murderous Millinery

It is evident that in this case, as in the butchering trade, the responsibility for whatever wrongs are done must rest ultimately on the class which demands an unnecessary commodity, rather than on that which is compelled by economic pressure to supply it; it is not the man who kills the bird, but the lady who wears the feathers in her hat, who is the true offender. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "Murderous Millinery")

But here it will be asked, is the use of fur and feathers unnecessary ? Now of course if we consider solely the present needs and tastes of society, in regard to these matters…the world, as alarmists point out to us, might have to go to bed without candles, and wake up to find itself without boots. It must be remembered, however, that such changes do not come about with suddenness, but, on the contrary, with the extremest slowness imaginable; and a little thought will suggest, what experience has already in many cases confirmed, that there is really no indispensable animal substance for which a substitute cannot be provided, when once there is sufficient demand, from the vegetable or mineral kingdom. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "Murderous Millinery")

The fur trade, in so far as it is a supply of ornamental clothing for those who are under no necessity of wearing fur at all, is a barbarous and stupid business. It makes patchwork, one may say, not only of the hides of its victims, but of the conscience and intellect of its supporters. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "Murderous Millinery")

Murderous, indeed, is the millinery which finds its most fashionable ornament in the dead bodies of birds—birds, the loveliest and most blithesome beings in Nature! (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "Murderous Millinery")

Experimental Torture

Let us assume (a large assumption, certainly, controverted as it is by some most weighty medical testimony) that the progress of surgical science is assisted by the experiments of the vivisector. What then? Before rushing to the conclusion that vivisection is justifiable on that account, a wise man will take into full consideration the other, the moral side of the question—the hideous injustice of torturing an innocent animal, and the terrible wrong thereby done to the humane sense of the community. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "Experimental Torture")

Nothing is necessary which is abhorrent, revolting, intolerable, to the general instincts of humanity. Better a thousand times that science should forego or postpone the questionable advantage of certain problematical discoveries, than that the moral conscience of the community should be unmistakably outraged by the confusion of right and wrong. The short cut is not always the right path ; and to perpetrate a cruel injustice on the lower animals, and then attempt to excuse it on the ground that it will benefit posterity, is an argument which is as irrelevant as it is immoral. Ingenious it may be (in the way of hoodwinking the unwary) but it is certainly in no true sense scientific. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "Experimental Torture")

Lines of Reform

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 civilization, 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 on the rights of the fellow-beings, human or animal, over whom we chance to hold jurisdiction. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "Lines of Reform")

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 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. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "Lines of Reform")

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 practice of fox-hunting—and the half-enlightened scientists who are unaware that vivisection has moral and spiritual, no less than physical, consequences. (Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "The Principle of Animals' Rights")

Bibliography of the Rights of Animals

In the biography, Henry Salt quotes from "the chief English works" on the subject of Animals' Rights "which have come within his own notice…showing the rise and progress of the movement and…reinforcing [his] conclusions"(Henry Salt, Animals' Rights, "Bibliography of the Rights of Animals").

Links to the Primary Source
document the authenticity of quotations while providing more in-depth insight into the ideologies of humanity against cruelty to animals and additional historical perspective on the continuing struggle for animal rights, animal welfare and the protection of animals.

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

Quotes briefly introduce animal rights activists, animal welfare advocates and authors; the history of animal rights, animal welfare and animal protection; and the literature of the humane movement against cruelty to animals.

These pages are part of an ongoing effort to provide free online access to historical literature on animal rights, animal welfare and humanity against cruelty to animals.