At first blush it may seem not only unnecessary, but even indecent, to
discuss such a proposition as the elevation of cruelty to the rank of a
human right. Unnecessary, because no vivisector confesses to a love of
cruelty for its own sake or claims any general fundamental right to be
cruel. Indecent, because there is an accepted convention to repudiate
cruelty; and vivisection is only tolerated by the law on condition that,
like judicial torture, it shall be done as mercifully as the nature of
the practice allows. But the moment the controversy becomes embittered,
the recriminations bandied between the opposed parties bring us
face-to-face with some very ugly truths. On one occasion I was invited
to speak at a large Anti-Vivisection meeting in the Queen's Hall in
London. I found myself on the platform with fox hunters, tame stag
hunters, men and women whose calendar was divided, not by pay days and
quarter days, but by seasons for killing animals for sport: the fox, the
hare, the otter, the partridge and the rest having each its appointed
date for slaughter. The ladies among us wore hats and cloaks and
head-dresses obtained by wholesale massacres, ruthless trappings,
callous extermination of our fellow creatures. We insisted on our
butchers supplying us with white veal, and were large and constant
consumers of pate de foie gras; both comestibles being obtained by
revolting methods. We sent our sons to public schools where indecent
flogging is a recognized method of taming the young human animal. Yet
we were all in hysterics of indignation at the cruelties of the
vivisectors. These, if any were present, must have smiled sardonically
at such inhuman humanitarians, whose daily habits and fashionable
amusements cause more suffering in England in a week than all the
vivisectors of Europe do in a year. I made a very effective speech, not
exclusively against vivisection, but against cruelty; and I have never
been asked to speak since by that Society, nor do I expect to be, as I
should probably give such offence to its most affluent subscribers that
its attempts to suppress vivisection would be seriously hindered. But
that does not prevent the vivisectors from freely using the "youre
another" retort, and using it with justice.
We must therefore give ourselves no airs of superiority when denouncing
the cruelties of vivisection. We all do just as horrible things, with
even less excuse. But in making that admission we are also making short
work of the virtuous airs with which we are sometimes referred to the
humanity of the medical profession as a guarantee that vivisection is
not abused--much as if our burglars should assure us that they arc too
honest to abuse the practice of burgling. We are, as a matter of fact,
a cruel nation; and our habit of disguising our vices by giving
polite names to the offences we are determined to commit does not,
unfortunately for my own comfort, impose on me. Vivisectors can hardly
pretend to be better than the classes from which they are drawn, or
those above them; and if these classes are capable of sacrificing
animals in various cruel ways under cover of sport, fashion, education,
discipline, and even, when the cruel sacrifices are human sacrifices, of
political economy, it is idle for the vivisector to pretend that he is
incapable of practising cruelty for pleasure or profit or both under
the cloak of science. We are all tarred with the same brush; and the
vivisectors are not slow to remind us of it, and to protest vehemently
against being branded as exceptionally cruel and its devisors of
horrible instruments of torture by people whose main notion of enjoyment
is cruel sport, and whose requirements in the way of villainously cruel
traps occupy pages of the catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores.