persuading the Home Secretary to make legislation on the Report of the
Vivisection Commission a Government question. Mr. Hutton appeared to
me to resist the —— criticisms of the _Times_ on the Report very
admirably!
“Thanking you for your note,
“I am, my dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours very truly,
“H. P. LIDDON.”
A few weeks afterwards when I invited him to attend a meeting he wrote
again a letter, to the last sentence of which I desire to call attention
as embodying the opinion of this eminent man on the _human_ moral
interest involved in our crusade.
“Christ Church, Oxford,
“May 22nd, 1876.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“I sincerely wish that I could obey your summons. But, as a professor
here, I have public duties on Thursday, the 1st of June, which I
cannot decline or transfer to other hands.
“I think I told you I was a useless person for these good purposes;
and so, you see, it is.
“Still you are very well off in the way of speakers, and will not miss
such a person as I. Heartily do I hope that the meeting may reward the
trouble you have taken about it by strengthening Lord Carnarvon’s
hands. The cause you have at heart is of _even greater importance to
human character than to the physical comfort of those of our ‘fellow
creatures’ who are most immediately concerned_.
“I am, my dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours very truly,
“H. P. LIDDON.”
The Deputation of March 20th to the Home Office was most favourably
received, and our Society was invited to submit to Government
suggestions respecting the provisions of the intended Bill. These
suggestions were framed at a Committee held at our office on the 30th
March, and they were adopted by Government after being approved by its
official advisers, and presented by Lord Carnarvon in the House of
Lords. The second reading took place on the 22nd May. On that occasion
Lord Coleridge made a most judicious speech in defence of the Bill, and
Lord Shaftesbury the long and beautiful one reprinted in our pamphlet,
“_In Memoriam_.” The next morning all the newspapers came out with
leading articles in praise of the Bill. It is hard now to realise that,
previous to undergoing the medical pressure which has twisted the
minds—(or at least the _pens_)—of three-fourths of the press, even the
great paper which has been our relentless opponent for 17 years was then
our cordial supporter. Everything at that time looked fair for us. The
Bill, as we had drafted it, did, practically, fulfil Mr. Hutton’s
aspiration. No experiment whatever under any circumstances was permitted
on a dog, cat, horse, ass, or mule; nor any on any other animal except
under conditions of complete anæsthesia from beginning to end. The Bill
included Licenses, but no Certificates dispensing with the above
provisions. Our hopes of carrying this bill seemed amply justified by
the reception it received from the House of Lords and the Press; and
from a great Conference of the R.S.P.C.A. and its branches, held on the
23rd May. We held our first General Meeting at Westminster Palace Hotel
on the 1st June and resolutions in support of the Bill were passed
enthusiastically; Lord Shaftesbury presiding, and the Marquis of Bute,
Lord Glasgow, Cardinal Manning and others speaking with great spirit. It
only needed, to all appearance, that the Bill should be pushed through
its final stage in the Lords and sent down to the House of Commons, to
secure its passage intact that same Session.
At this most critical moment, and through the whole month of June, Lord
Carnarvon, in whose hands the Bill lay, was drawn away from London and
occupied by the illness and death of Lady Carnarvon. No words can tell
the anxiety and alarm this occasioned us, when we learned that a large
section of the medical profession, which had so far seemed quiescent if
not approving, had been roused by their chief wire-puller into a state
of exasperation at the supposed “insult” of proposing to submit them to
legal control in experimenting on living animals, (as they were already
subjected to it, by the Anatomy Act, in dissecting dead bodies). These
doctors, to the number of 3,000, signed a Memorial to the Home
Secretary, calling on him to modify the Bill so as practically to
reverse its character, and make it a measure, no longer protecting
vivisected animals from torture, but vivisectors from prosecution under
Martin’s Act. This Memorial was presented on the 10th July by a
Deputation, variously estimated at 300 and at 800 doctors, who, in
either case, were sufficiently numerous to overflow the purlieus of the
Home Office and to overawe Mr. Cross. On the 10th of August the
Bill—essentially altered in submission to the medical memorialists—was
brought by Mr. Cross into the House of Commons, and was read a second
time. On the 15th August, 1876, it received the Royal Assent and became
the Act 39–40 Vict., c. 77, commonly called the “Vivisection Act.”
The world has never seemed to me quite the same since that dreadful
time. My hopes had been raised so high to be dashed so low as even to
make me fear that I had done harm instead of good, and brought fresh
danger to the hapless brutes for whose sake, as I realised more and more
their agonies, I would have gladly died. I was baffled in an aim nearer
to my heart than any other had ever been, and for which I had strained
every nerve for many months; and of all the hundreds of people who had
seemed to sympathise and had signed our Memorials and petitions, there
were none to say: “_This shall not be!_” Justice and Mercy seemed to
have gone from the earth.
We left London,—the Session and the summer being over, and came as usual
to Wales; but our enjoyment of the beauty of this lovely land had in
great measure vanished. Even after twenty years my friend and I look
back to our joyous summers before that miserable one, and say, “Ah!
_that_ was when we knew very little of Vivisection.”
In my despair I wrote several letters of bitter reproach to the friends
in Parliament who had allowed our Bill to be so mutilated as that the
_British Medical Journal_ crowed over it, as affording full liberty to
“science”; and I also wrote to several newspapers saying that after this
failure to obtain a reasonable restrictive Bill, I, for one, should
labour henceforth to obtain total prohibition. In reply to my letter (I
fear a very petulant one) Lord Shaftesbury wrote me this full and
important explanation which I commend to the careful reading of such of
our friends as desire now to rescind the Act of 1876.
“Castle Wemyss, Wemyss Bay, N.B.,
“Aug. 16th, 1876.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“Until we shall have seen the Act in print we cannot form a just
estimate of the force of the amendments. Some few, so I see by the
papers, were introduced in Committee, after my last interview with Mr.
Cross; but of their character I know nothing. I am disposed, however,
to believe that he would not have admitted anything of real
importance.
“Mr. Cross’s difficulties were very great at all times; but they
increased much as the Session was drawing to a close. The want of
time, the extreme pressure of business, the active malignity of the
Scientific men, and the indifference of his Colleagues, left the
Secretary of State in a very weak and embarrassing position.
“Your letter, which I have just received, asks whether ‘the Bill
cannot be turned out in the House of Lords?’ The reply is that,
whether advisable or unadvisable, it cannot now be done, for the
Parliament is prorogued.
“In the Bill as submitted to me, just before the second reading at a
final interview with Mr. Cross, Mr. Holt and Lord Cardwell being
present, some changes were made which I by no means approved. But the
question, then, was simply, ‘The Bill as propounded, or no Bill,’ for
Mr. Cross stoutly maintained that, without the alterations suggested,
he had no hope of carrying anything at all. I reverted, therefore, to
my first opinion, stated at the very commencement of my co-operation
with your Committee, that it was of great importance, nay
indispensable, to obtain a Bill, however imperfect, which should
condemn the practice, put a limit on the exercise of it, and give us a
foundation on which to build amendments hereafter as evidence and
opportunity shall be offered to us.
“The Bill is of that character. I apprehended that if there were no
Bill then, there would be none at any time. No private Member, I
believe, and I still believe, could undertake such a measure with even
a shadow of hope and there was more than doubt, whether a Secretary of
State would, again, entangle himself with so bitter and so wearisome a
question in the face of all Science, and the antipathies of most of
his Colleagues. Public sympathy would have declined, and would not
have easily been aroused a second time. The public sympathy at its
best, was only noisy, and not effective; and this assertion is proved
by the few signatures to petitions, compared with the professed
feeling; and by the extreme difficulty to raise any funds in
proportion to the exigency of the case.
“The evidence, too, given to the Commission, which was, after all, our
main reliance, would have grown stale; and, the Physiologists would
have taken good care that, for some time at least, nothing should
transpire to take its place.
“We have gained an enactment that Experiments shall be performed by
none but Licensed Persons, thereby excluding, should the Act be well
enforced, the host of young students and their bed-chamber practices.
“We have gained an enactment that all experiments shall be performed
under the influence of Anæsthetics;[33] and, thirdly, the greatest
enactment of all, that the Secretary of State is responsible for the
due execution of all these provisions in Parliament, and in his
Office, instead of the College of Physicians, or some such
unreachable, and intangible Body, as many Secretaries of State, except
Mr. Cross, would have evasively, appointed.
“This provision under the Statutes, so unexpected, and valuable, could
have been suggested to Parliament by a Secretary of State only, and I
feel sure that no Secretary of State in any ‘Liberal’ Administration
would listen to the proposal; and I very much doubt whether Mr. Cross
himself, had his present Bill been rejected, would have, in the case
of a new Bill, repeated his offer of making it a measure for which the
Cabinet has to answer.
“I have seen your letter to the _Echo_ and the _Daily News_. You are
quite justified in your determination to agitate the country on the
subject of vivisection, and obtain, if it be possible, the total
abolition of it. Such an issue may be within reach, and it is only by
experience that we can ascertain how far such a blessed consummation
is practicable. You will have a good deal of sympathy with your
efforts, and from no one more than from myself.
“Yours truly,
“SHAFTESBURY.”
When we all returned to town in October, the Committee placed on the
_Minutes_ a letter from me, saying that I could only retain the office
of Honorary Secretary if the Society should adopt the principle of total
prohibition. A circular was sent out calling for votes on the point, and
by the 22nd November, 1876, the Resolution was carried, “That the
Society would watch the existing Act with a view to the enforcement of
its restrictions and its extension to the total prohibition of painful
experiments on animals.”
In February, 1877, the Committee, to my satisfaction, unanimously agreed
to support Mr. Holt’s Bill for total prohibition; and in aid thereof
exhibited on the hoardings of London 1,700 handbills and 300 posters,
which were enlarged reproductions of the illustrations of vivisection
from the Physiological Hand-books. These posters certainly were more
effective than as many thousands of speeches and pamphlets; and the
indignation of the scientific party sufficiently proved that such was
the case. On the 27th April we held our second annual meeting in support
of Mr. Holt’s Bill, and had for speakers Lord Shaftesbury, the good
Bishop of Winchester Dr. Harold-Browne, (now, alas! dead), Lord
Mount-Temple, Prof. Sheldon Amos, Cardinal Manning, and Prince Lucien
Bonaparte. The last remarkable man and erudite scholar (who most closely
resembled his uncle in person, if we could imagine Napoleon I.
commanding only armies _of books_!), was, from first to last, a warm
friend of our cause. After this meeting we elected him Vice-President
and here is his letter of acknowledgment:—
“Prince Lucien Bonaparte to Miss F. P. C.
“6, Norfolk Terrace, Bayswater,
“4th May, 1877.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“I feel highly honoured at being nominated one of the Vice-Presidents
of the Society for Protection of Animals liable to vivisection, and
ask you to return the Committee my best thanks.
“I am a great admirer of a Society which, like yours, opposes so
strongly the abominable practice of vivisection, because for my own
part, I consider it, even in its mildest form, as a shame to Science,
a dishonour to modern civilisation, and (what I think more important)
a great offence against the law of God.
“Believe me, my dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours very sincerely,
“L. BONAPARTE.”
Here are some further letters concerned with that meeting or written to
me soon afterwards:—
“Christ Church, Oxford,
“March 26th, 1877.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“I beg to thank you sincerely for your kind letter.
“So far as I can see there is, I fear, little chance of my being at
liberty to take part in the proceedings on the 27th of April.
“However, with the names which you announce, you will be more than
able to dispense with any assistance that I could lend to the common
object. You will, I trust, be able to strengthen Mr. Holt’s hands. If
what I have heard of his measure is at all accurate, it seems to be at
once moderate and efficient.
“I was much struck by an observation which you were, I think, said to
have made the other day at Bristol, to the effect that as matters now
stand everything depends upon the discretion, or rather, upon the
moral sympathies of the Home Secretary. Mr. Cross, I believe, would
always do well in all such matters. But it does not do to reckon with
the Roman Empire as if it were always to be governed by a Marcus
Aurelius.
“I am, my dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours very truly,
“H. P. LIDDON.”
“House of Commons,
“26th March.
“Dear Miss Cobbe,
“I am sorry I cannot undertake to speak at your meeting on the 27th
April. I am not sure that I shall be in London on that day, but
request you to send me any notice of the meeting.
“My time and strength are somewhat overtaxed owing to an inability,
and I may add indisposition, to say No when I think I may be useful. I
am, however, I can assure you, in sympathy with you in your attempt to
put down torture in every form.
“I am, yours very sincerely,
“S. MORLEY.”
(Samuel Morley, M.P.)
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“I will come in at some stage of your proceedings. I am bound first to
Convocation—and am engaged at Kingston before 5.
“What I should like would be to thank Lord Shaftesbury; but this must
depend on the time that I come, and _that_ must depend on the
exigencies of Convocation.
“Yours truly,
“A. P. STANLEY.
(The Dean of Westminster.)
“April 25th, 1877.”
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“I am very sorry that through absence from home my answer to your note
has been delayed. I shall not be able to take part in your meeting on
the 27th, for I am not in a state of health to take part in any public
meeting; but if I am at all able I should like much to attend it and
hear for myself the views of the speakers. I have not expressed
publicly any opinion on the question of Vivisection, being anxious at
first to await the determination of the Commission, and then to see
how the restrictions were likely to work.
“I confess that my own mind is leaning very strongly to the conclusion
that there is no safe, right course other than entire prohibition. The
more I think of it the more I dread the brutality which in spite of
the influence of the best men will inevitably be developed in our
young Experimenters, in these days of almost fanatical devotion to
scientific research. It seems to me to more than counterbalance the
physical advantages to our sick what may grow out of the practice of
vivisection.
“And I am very sceptical about these physical advantages. I doubt
whether the secrets of nature can be successfully discovered by
torture, any more than the secrets of hearts. We have abandoned the
one endeavour, finding the results to be by no means worth the cost. I
am persuaded that we shall soon, for the same reason, have to abandon
the other.
“I am not able, as I say, to take part in a meeting, but as soon as I
am able I intend to preach on the subject, and if you can forward to
me any information which will be useful I shall be much obliged to
you. Believe me
“Ever my dear Miss Cobbe,
“Yours very faithfully,
“J. BALDWIN BROWN.”
(Rev. J. B. Brown.)
By this time there were two other Anti-vivisection Societies in London,
beside Mr. Jesse’s Society at Macclesfield, all working for total
prohibition; and though of course we had various small difficulties and
rivalries in the course of time, yet practically we all helped each
other and the cause. Eventually the _International Society_, of which
Mr. and Mrs. Adlam were the spirited leaders, coalesced with ours and
added to our Committee several of its most valuable members including
our present much respected Chairman, Mr. Ernest Bell. The _London
Anti-vivisection Society_, though I expended all my blandishments on it,
has never consented to amalgamation, but has done a great work of its
own for which we have all reason to hold it in honour.
The revolt against the cruelties of science spread also about this time
to the continent. Baron Weber read his _Torture Chamber of Science_ in
Dresden, and created thereby a great sensation, followed by the
formation of the German League, of which he is President, and the
foundation of its organ, the _Thier-und-Menschen-Freund_, edited by Dr.
Paul Förster, now a member of the Reichstag. Other Anti-vivisection
Societies were founded then or in subsequent years in Hanover, in
Berlin, and in Stockholm. In Copenhagen those devoted friends of
animals, M. and Mdme. Lembcké, had long contended vigorously against the
local vivisector, Panum. In Italy the Florence _Società Protettrice_, of
which our Queen is Patroness and Countess Baldelli the indefatigable
Hon. Sec., has steadily worked against vivisection from its foundation;
and so has the Torinese Society of which Dr. Riboli is President and
Countess Biandrate Morelli the leading member. In Riga there has also
been a persevering movement against Vivisection by the excellent Society
of which the _Anwalt der Thiere_ is the (first-class) organ, and Madame
V. Schilling the presiding spirit.
In short, by the end of the decade, though we had been so cruelly
defeated, we were conscious that our movement had extended and had
become to all appearance one of those permanent agitations, which, once
begun, go on till the abuses which aroused them are abolished. In
America the movement only took definite shape in February, 1883, when,
under the auspices of the indefatigable Mrs. White, the _American
Anti-vivisection Society_ was founded at Philadelphia; to be followed up
by its most flourishing Illinois Branch, carried on with immense spirit
by Mrs. Fairchild Allen. Mr. Peabody and Mr. Greene have since
established at Boston the _New England Anti-vivisection Society_, which
has already become one of our most powerful allies.
On the 2nd May, Mr. Holt’s Bill for total prohibition was debated in the
House of Commons, and on a division there were 83 votes in its favour
and 222 against it.
At last the Committee of the Victoria Street Society formally adopted
the thoroughgoing policy; and at a Meeting, August 7th, 1878, resolved
“to appeal henceforth to public opinion in favour of the total
prohibition of Vivisection.” We then changed our title to that of the
_Society for Protection of Animals from Vivisection_. Dr. Hoggan and his
wife, Mrs. Hoggan, M.D., and also Mr. de Fonblanque retired from the
Committee with cordial goodwill on both sides, and the Archbishop of
York withdrew from the Vice-Presidency. But, beside these losses, I do
not believe that we had any others, and there was soon a large batch of
fresh recruits of new Members who had long resented our previous
half-hearted policy,—as they considered it to have been.
For my own part I had accepted from the outset the assurance I received
on all hands that a Bill for the total prohibition of Vivisection had
not the remotest chance of passing through Parliament in the present
state of public opinion; but that a Bill might be framed, which,
proceeding only on the grounds of Restriction, might effectually and
thoroughly exclude “_not only torture but anything at all approaching
thereto_”; and that such a Bill had every chance of becoming law. To
promote such a Bill had been my single aim and hope, and when it had
been prepared and presented and received so favourably, it really
appeared as if we were on the right and reasonable tack; much as we
hated any concession whatever to the demands of the vivisectors.
But when we found that the compromise which we proposed had failed, and
that our Bill providing the _minimum_ of protection for animals at all
acceptable by their friends, was twisted into a Bill protecting their
tormentors, we were driven to raise our demands to the total prohibition
of the practice, and to determine to work upon that basis for any number
of years till public opinion be ripe for our measure.
This was one aspect of our position; but there was another. We had in
truth gone into this crusade almost as our forefathers had set off for
the Holy Land, with scarcely any knowledge of the Power which we were
invading. We knew that dreadful cruelties had been done; but we fondly
imagined they were abuses which were _separable_ from the _practice_ of
experimenting on living animals. We accepted blindly the representation
of Vivisection by its advocates as a rare resource of baffled surgeons
and physicians, intent on some discovery for the immediate benefit of
humanity or the solution of some pressing and important physiological
problem; and we thought that with due and well considered restrictions
and safeguards on these occasional experiments, we might effectually
shut out cruelty. By slow, very slow degrees, we learned that nothing
was much further from the truth than these fancy pictures of ideal
Vivisection, and that real Vivisection is _not_ the occasional and
regretfully-adopted resource of a few, but the _daily employment_ (Carl
Vogt called it his “daily bread”) of hundreds of men and students,
devoted to it as completely and professionally as butchers to cutting up
carcases. Finally we found that to extend protection by any conceivable
Act of Parliament to animals once delivered to the physiologists in
their laboratories, was chimerical. Vivisection, we recognized at last
to be a _Method of Research_ which may be either sanctioned or
prohibited as a Method, but which cannot be restricted efficiently by
rules founded on humane considerations wholly irrelevant to the
scientific enquiry.
On the moral side also, we became profoundly impressed with the truth of
the principle to which Canon Liddon refers in the letter I have quoted,
viz., that the Anti-Vivisection cause is “of even greater importance to
human character than to the physical comfort of our fellow-creatures who
are most immediately concerned.” As I wrote of it, about this time in
_Bernard’s Martyrs_:—