Chapter II treats of “Cruelty to Inferior Animals.

“Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation.” By Jeremy Bentham. London, 1780. Bentham’s works contain several passages asserting the rights of animals. His views, ridiculed by Dr. Whewell, were supported by J. S. Mill, “Dissertations and Discussions,” ii, pp. 482-485.

“The Cry of Nature, or An Appeal to Mercy and Justice on behalf of the Persecuted Animals.” By John Oswald. London, 1791. Written to advocate the discontinuance of flesh-eating.

“A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes.” London, 1792. Attributed to Thomas Taylor. (See above, p. 4.)

“A Philosophical Treatise on Horses, and on the Moral Duties of Man towards the Brute Creation.” By John Lawrence. Two vols. London, 1796-1798. The author of this humane book was a farmer, an authority on the management of domestic animals, who was consulted by Richard Martin, M.P., on the details of his Ill-treatment of Cattle Bill, which became law in 1822.

“On the Conduct of Man to Inferior Animals.” By George Nicholson. Manchester, 1797. A compilation of passages illustrating man’s cruelty to the lower races.

“An Essay on Humanity to Animals.” By Thomas Young, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. London, 1798. The book contains chapters on sport, cruelties connected with the table, etc.

“The Hare, or Hunting Incompatible with Humanity.” Dublin, 1800. A story, by an anonymous writer, purporting to be told by a Hare.

“Zoophilos.” By Henry Crowe. Buckingham, 1819. Contains chapters on sport, methods of slaughter for food, vivisection, etc.

“Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes.” By Lewis Gompery. London, 1824. The author of this book was secretary of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and founder of an Animals’ Friend Society. A later volume, “Fragments in Defence of Animals,” was published by him in 1852.

“The Rights of Animals, and Man’s Obligation to treat them with Humanity.” By William H. Drummond, D.D. London, 1838. A guarded essay, in which the writer pleads for the restriction of vivisection, but justifies flesh-eating and field-sports.

“Philozoia, or Moral Reflections on the Actual Condition of the Animal Kingdom, and the means of improving the same.” By T. Forster. Brussels, 1839. A plea for humane education. A section of the book is devoted to the condition of animals on the Continent.

“The Obligation and Extent of Humanity to Brutes, principally considered with reference to the Domesticated Animals.” By W. Youatt. London, 1839. The writer, a Professor in the Royal Veterinary College, was a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

“The Morality of Field Sports.” By Professor E. A. Freeman, “Fortnightly Review,” October, 1869. This article, together with a reply by Anthony Trollope and a rejoinder by Prof. Freeman, was reprinted (1900), under the title of “The Morality of Hunting,” by Mr. R. K. Gaye, of Trinity College, Cambridge.

“Some Talk about Animals and their Masters.” By Sir Arthur Helps. London, 1873. This popular little book contains many good remarks, but does not advance any consistent view of the question.

“The Rights of an Animal, a New Essay in Ethics.” By Edward Byron Nicholson. London, 1879. This book, with much interesting information, includes a reprint of a chapter by John Lawrence on “The Rights of Beasts.”

“The Ethics of Diet, a Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Habit of Flesh-Eating.” By Howard Williams. London and Manchester, 1883. Though written primarily from a vegetarian standpoint, this scholarly work contains a large amount of general information invaluable to students of the animal question.

“Animals’ Rights, considered in relation to Social Progress.” By Henry S. Salt. London, 1892.

“Moral Philosophy.” By Joseph Rickaby, S.J. London, 1892. Contains a statement of the Catholic position in denial of rights to animals.

“Natural Rights.” By David G. Ritchie. London, 1895. See above, Appendix I.

“The New Charter, a discussion of the Rights of Men and the Rights of Animals.” Essays published by the Humanitarian League. London, 1896.

“Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology.” By E. P. Evans. London, 1898.

“The Nature and Development of Animal Intelligence.” By Wesley Mills, M.D. London, 1898.

“Kith and Kin: Poems of Animal Life.” Edited by Henry S. Salt. London, 1901.

“Every Living Creature.” By Ralph Waldo Trine. London, 1901.

“The Basis of Morality.” By Arthur Schopenhauer. Translated by A. B. Bullock. London, 1903.

“The Universal Kinship.” By J. Howard Moore. London, 1906. This brilliantly written work asserts the scientific basis of humanitarianism, and treats of the subject of animals’ rights under three heads--the physical, the psychical, and the ethical kinship between human and sub-human.

“The New Ethics.” By J. Howard Moore. London, 1907.

“The Church and Kindness to Animals.” London, 1907. A translation from the French, “L’Église et la Pitié envers les Animaux” (1903), in vindication of the Catholic Church against the charge of indifference to animal suffering.

“The Place of Animals in Human Thought.” By the Countess Martinengo Cesaresco. London, 1909. A work of value to those who are studying the psychological aspect of the question.

“The Mahatma and the Hare.” By H. Rider Haggard. London, 1911.

“Killing for Sport.” By various writers, edited by Henry S. Salt, with Introduction by G. Bernard Shaw. London, 1915.

The Publications of the Humanitarian League--Pamphlets on various subjects, 1891-1919.

“Suffering and Wrong. The Message of the New Religion.” By Francis Wood. London, 1916.

“Savage Survivals.” By J. Howard Moore. London, 1916.

“The Great Kinship.” An Anthology of Humanitarian Poetry, edited by Bertram Lloyd. London, 1921.

“The Soul of an Animal.” By T. S. Hawkins. London, 1921.

INDEX.

Aberdare, Lord, on Vivisection, 73 (note 41).

Aristotle, quoted, 17.

Arnold, Dr., quoted, 15.

Bentham, Jeremy, on rights, 5, 14, 17, 42.

“Better for the animals themselves,” 24, 25, 37, 46, 52, 72, 73 (note 41).

Bright, John, quoted, 86.

Büchner, quoted, 83.

Caged animals, 36-39.

Caging of birds, 39.

Cartesian doctrine, 10, 11.

Castration of animals, 30, 31.

Cattle traffic, 42, 45.

Chesterfield, Lord, quoted, 43.

Church, the, and rights of animals, 3.

Cobbe, Frances Power, 8, 70, 71.

Comte, Auguste, 24 (note 17).

Cruelty to animals, causes of, 8-10, 16; responsibility for, 59; forms of, 75, 78.

Darwin, quoted, 12.

Democracy and rights of animals, 4, 23, 24, 85, 86.

Dixie, Lady F., quoted, 57.

“Domestic” animals, protected by law, 26.

“Dumb” animals, an objectionable term, 14, 15.

Education, as a method of reform, 86-89.

Erskine, Lord, quoted, 90.

Evans, E. P., quoted, 12-14.

Feather trade, 63, 64.

Flesh-eating, 42-47.

Food question, importance of, 41.

Fur trade, 59-63.

Gompertz, Lewis, quoted, 25 (note 19).

Helps, Sir A., 27.

Huxley, 10 (note 11).

Immortality of animals, 9, 10, 12.

Jenyns, Soame, quoted, 36, 52.

Kropotkine, P., 20 (note 16).

Law for preventing cruelty to animals, need of amendment, 55-57.

Lawrence, John, quoted, 5, 6, 26, 27, 42.

Lecky’s “History of European Morals,” 9, 15, 16.

Legislation, as a method of reform, 89-91.

Machinery, use of, 29.

“Martin’s Act,” 6, 34, 56, 90.

Michelet, quoted, 44, 53, 54, 69.

Mill, J. S., quoted, 91.

Mills, Dr. Wesley, 12, 13.

Montaigne, 27.

More, Sir T., on sport, 54.

Natural history, true method and false, 67-69.

Nature, and struggle for existence, 19, 20, 47, 80, 81.

Necessity, plea of, 72, 79.

Nicholson, E. B., quoted, 37, 46.

Nomenclature, influence of, 14, 15.

Pain, the “discipline” of, 19.

Paine, Thomas, 4.

Paley, Dr. W., quoted, 43.

Performing Animals, 40.

“Pets,” 32.

Pheasant-shooting, 57.

Plutarch, 28.

Porphyry, 3, 21.

“Preservation” of animals, by sportsmen, 51, 52; by collectors, 68.

Primatt, Dr. H., 9, 19, 26, 77, 78.

Property, influence on legislation, 34, 35.

Rabbit-coursing, 56.

Reason and instinct, 12, 13.

Rights, definition, 1, 2; need of a clear principle, 7, 78, 79.

Ritchie, D. G., 2, 3, 7.

Romanes, Professor, 10.

Rousseau, 3, 88.

Scientists and the rights of animals, 67-70.

Schopenhauer, quoted, 11, 14, 42.

Seal Fishery, 63.

Slavery, 16, 17.

Spencer, Herbert, on rights, 2.

Sport, as related to other cruelties, 50, 51, 65, 66, 74; excuses for, 53; zest of, 54, 55.

Stag-hunting, 55.

Strauss, quoted, 83.

Thomson, J. Arthur, quoted, 20 (note 16).

Thoreau, 27, 29, 49, 68.

Vegetarianism, 44, 48, 49.

“Vermin,” treatment of, 56, 57.

Vivisection, its iniquity, 69, 70 (note 39); relation to other cruelties, 67, 70, 74; morality of, 71, 73; right method of combating, 75, 76.

Voltaire, 3, 10.

Wild animals, unprotected by law, 26, 34-36; sanctuaries for, 40, 55.

Wood, Rev. J. G., quoted, 12.

Wordsworth, quoted, 51.

Zoological Gardens, 38.

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] An admirable definition of Rights is given by Mr. G. W. Foote in his contribution to “The New Charter”: “Rights are of three sorts--legal, moral, and natural. The legal meaning of ‘Rights’ is undoubtedly the primary one ... and this is the only _definite_ sense, in which the word can be used.... Moral Rights are widespread new sentiments, demanding incorporation into Legal Rights; and Natural Rights are still newer sentiments, aspiring to recognition as Moral Rights, with a view to ultimate incorporation as Legal Rights.... They are respectively, a solid fact, a general demand, and a growing aspiration.”

[2] This remark implies not the “disparagement of logic and of all careful use of language,” with which Professor D. G. Ritchie has charged me in his book on “Natural Rights,” but simply that social reformers cannot be debarred from using the best available terms because no logically exact term is forthcoming. See Appendix I.

[3] Attributed to Thomas Taylor, the Platonist.

[4] “Principles of Penal Law,” chap, xvi., 1780.

[5] John Lawrence, “Philosophical Treatise on the Moral Duties of Man towards the Brute Creation,” 1796.

[6] Professor Ritchie contends in his “Natural Rights” that domestic animals have _not_ been granted rights in English law. “Because a work of art, or some ancient monument, is protected by law from injury, do we speak of the _rights_ of pictures or stones?” But the distinction is obvious--works of art are protected only as _property_, domestic animals as _sentient beings_, whether owned or unowned.

[7] “Fraser,” November, 1863; “The Rights of Man and the Claims of Brutes,” by Frances Power Cobbe.

[8] “Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies,” 1854.

[9] Humphry Primatt, D.D., author of “The Duty of Mercy to Brute Animals” (1776).

[10] See the article on “Animal Immortality,” “The Nineteenth Century,” Jan., 1891, by Norman Pearson. The upshot of his argument is that, “if we accept the immortality of the human soul, and _also_ accept its evolutional origin, we cannot deny the survival, in some form or other, of animal minds.”

[11] Prof. Huxley’s remarks, in “Science and Culture,” give a partial support to Descartes’ theory, but do not bear on the moral question of rights. For, though he concludes that animals are probably “sensitive automata,” he classes men in the same category. See Appendix II.

[12] Schopenhauer’s “Foundation of Morality.” I quote the passage as translated in Mr. Howard Williams’s “Ethics of Diet.”

[13] “Descent of Man,” chap. iii.

[14] “Man and Beast, here and hereafter,” 1874.

[15] In Sir A. Helps’s “Animals and their Masters.” See an article on “Dumb Animals,” in “The Humanitarian,” November, 1912. Also the chapter on “Speech as a Barrier between Man and Beast,” in Mr. E. P. Evans’s work on “Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology,” 1898.

[16] See Prince Kropotkine’s articles on “Mutual Aid among Animals,” “Nineteenth Century,” 1890, where the conclusion is arrived at that “sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.” A similar view is expressed in the “Study of Animal Life,” 1892, by J. Arthur Thomson. “What we must protest against,” he says, in an interesting chapter on “The Struggle of Life,” “is that one-sided interpretation according to which individualistic competition is nature’s sole method of progress.”

Another and more recent work, which has a very important bearing on this question, is “Symbiosis: a Socio-Physiological Study of Evolution,” by H. Reinheimer, 1920.

[17] Auguste Comte included the domestic animals as an organic part of the Positivist conception of humanity.

[18] “Moral Duty towards Animals,” “Macmillan’s Magazine,” April, 1882, by the then Bishop of Carlisle.

[19] See Lewis Gompertz’ “Moral Inquiries” (1824), where it is argued that “at least in the present state of society it is unjust, and considering the unnecessary abuse they suffer from being in the power of man, it is wrong to use them, and to encourage their being placed in his power.”

[20] “Animals and their Masters,” p. 101.

[21] See Appendix III.

[22] Under the Animals (Anaesthetics) Act, 1919, an anæsthetic is now required in certain cases, but the scope of the Act needs to be greatly enlarged.

[23] The use of dogs for purposes of draught was prohibited in London in 1839, and in 1854 this enactment was extended to the whole kingdom.

[24] “On Cruelty to the Inferior Animals,” by Soame Jenyns, 1782.

[25] Mr. E. B. Nicholson. See Appendix IV.

[26] Unfortunately they are not of much value even for _that_ purpose, owing to the deterioration of health and vigour caused by their imprisonment. “The skeletons of aged carnivora,” says Dr. W. B. Carpenter, “are often good for nothing as museum specimens, their bones being rickety and distorted.”

[27] “La Bible de l’Humanité.”

[28] See the Humanitarian League pamphlets on “Cattle-ships,” and “The Reform of the Slaughter-house.”

[29] “The Rights of an Animal,” 1879.

[30] Edward Carpenter, “England’s Ideal.”

[31] As in the article by Sir Herbert Maxwell on “Our Obligations to Wild Animals,” “Blackwood’s Magazine,” August, 1899.

[32] Soame Jenyns, 1782.

[33] See the chapter on Fallacies of Sportsmen in the volume of essays entitled “Killing for Sport” (George Bell and Sons, 1915). Several of the sophisms by which fox-hunting is commonly defended were employed by Dr. Lang, Archbishop of York, in an address which he gave (November 16, 1913) when dedicating a stained window to the memory of a deceased blood-sportsman.

[34] “The Horrors of Sport,” Humanitarian League pamphlet, by Lady Florence Dixie.

[35] “It is extremely difficult to see why these tame deer of park and paddock should not be held to be domestic animals within the meaning of the Acts for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Indeed, if they have ceased to be _feræ naturæ_ they must be domestic animals, unless there be some miserable _tertium quid_ which is neither one nor the other. I am not aware that there ever has been a definite decision of the High Court upon this matter, and I venture to think that if a suitable case were to be taken up and properly argued, it is possible that a judgment welcome to humanitarians might be obtained.”--_Sir George Greenwood_ (“Humane Review,” January, 1908).

[36] Letter to “Pall Mall Gazette,” March 24th, 1892, by Lady Florence Dixie.

[37] Since this was written, more than thirty years ago, there has been a welcome growth of public feeling, resulting in a better control of the plumage trade.

[38] See Appendix V.

[39] We are told that in this country such barbarities are no longer possible, because, by the Act of 1876, vivisections may be performed by none but licensed persons, and the use of anaesthetics is made obligatory. It has to be remembered, however, that special licences can be obtained to dispense with anaesthetics, or, if an anæsthetic be administered, to allow the vivisector to keep the animal alive after the effect of the anæsthetic has passed away, in order to watch the results of the experiment, during which period the animal frequently has to endure great suffering.

[40] On the reference to this passage in “The Confessions of a Physician,” by V. Veresaeff, see Appendix VI.

[41] It is said that the first Lord Aberdare, in presiding over a meeting of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in warning the society against entering on an anti-vivisection crusade, gave utterance to the delightfully irrelevant remark that he had himself been thrice operated on, and was all the better for it!

[42] See J. Cotter Morrison’s article on “Scientific _versus_ Bucolic Vivisection,” “Fortnightly Review,” 1885.

[43] Professor Jevons, “Fortnightly Review,” 1876.

[44] “Mind in Animals,” translated by Annie Besant.

[45] “The Old Faith and the New.”

[46] See Appendix VII.

[47] See Appendix VIII.

[48] “They 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.

[49] “Principles of Political Economy.”

[50] See p. 3.

[51] See p. 10.

[52] See p. 29.

[53] See p. 37.

[54] See p. 69.

[55] See p. 71.

[56] From the translation by Simeon Linden, London, 1904; pp. 158, 159.

[57] See p. 84.

[58] _Daily News_, April 10, 1906.

[59] See p. 86.

[60] It has not been attempted in the following pages to give a complete bibliography of the doctrine of Animals’ Rights, but merely a list of some of the chief works, in English, that touch directly on that subject.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Alternate or archaic spelling has been retained from the original.