are excepted, it simply amounts, to the average dull worker, to no
more than a kind of upper shopwork, weighing out, and labelling, and
learning alphabetical formulæ; a superior Grocery-assistant’s work;
and has not a single element of higher mental training in it. Not to
mention that it leaves out all knowledge of man and life, and
_therefore_ is eminently fitted to train men for life and its
struggles! Physiology, in its worser sense adds to this a brutalising
of the average practitioner, or rather a devilish combination of
intellect-worship and cruelty at the expense of feeling and character.
For my part, if it were true that vivisection had wonderfully relieved
bodily disease for men, if it were at the cost of lost spirits, then I
should say, Let the body perish! And it _is_ at the cost of lost
spirits! I do not say that under no circumstances should an experiment
take place, but I do say that under no circumstance should an
experiment take place for teaching purposes. You will see how decided
my judgment is on this matter. I send you three Addresses on
Education, which in smaller space than my books, will illustrate the
positive side of my experience and beliefs.
“Yours faithfully,
“EDWARD THRING.”
Our Committee was, in all the years in which I had to do with it, the
most harmonious and friendly of which I have ever heard. Lord
Shaftesbury, who presided 49 times, and never once failed us when he was
expected, was, of course, as all the world knows, a first-rate Chairman,
getting through an immense amount of business, while allowing every
member his, or her, legitimate rights of speech and voting. He never
showed himself, (I have been told,) anywhere more genial and zealous
than with us. Lord Mount-Temple attended very frequently, and Lady
Mount-Temple from first to last has been one of our warmest and wisest
friends. General Colin Mackenzie, a devout and noble old soldier, spoke
little, but what he did say was always straight to the mark, and the
affectionate respect we all felt for him made his presence delightful.
Lady Portsmouth (now the Dowager Countess) attended in those days very
regularly and Lady Camperdown has given us her unwearied help from that
time to this. I have spoken of the very valuable services of Mr. E. de
Fonblanque. In later years my friend Rev. William Henry Channing was a
great support to me. The Cardinal was, perhaps, a little reserved, but
always carefully kind and courteous, and whatever he said bore great
weight. Lord Bute’s advice was very valuable and full of good sense. Mr.
Shaen’s legal knowledge served us often. In brief, each member was
useful. There never were any parties or cabals in the Committee. It was
my business as Hon. Sec. (especially after my colleague, Dr. Hoggan,
retired) to lay proposals for action before the Committee. They were
sometimes rejected and often completely modified; but we all felt that
the one thing we desired was simply to find the best way of forwarding
our cause, and we were thankful for the guidance of the wise and
experienced men who were our leaders. In short, the feelings which
inspired us round that long oak office-table were not ill befitting our
work; and now that so many of those who sat there beside me in the
earlier years have passed from earth, I find myself pondering whether
they have met “_Elsewhere_;” where, ere long I may join them. They must
form a blessed company in any world. May my place be with _them_, please
God! rather than with the votaries of Science, in the “secular to be.”
In later years the _personnel_ of the Committee has of course been
largely renewed. Lady Mount-Temple, Lady Camperdown and Mrs. Frank
Morrison almost alone remain from the earlier body. Miss Marston also,
who originally founded the _London Anti-vivisection Society_, has been
for many years one of the firmest and wisest friends of the Victoria
Street Society also. I have spoken above of all that we owe to Capt.
Pirkis’ unfailing help at the Committee, even while residing far out of
town; and of the zeal wherewith he and his gifted wife founded the first
of our Branches, and have laboured in circulating our literature. Miss
Monro, Miss Rees, Miss Bryant, and Mrs. Arthur Arnold have never wearied
through many years in patiently and vigorously aiding our work. Of our
excellent chairman, Mr. Ernest Bell’s services to the Anti-vivisection
cause it is needless for me to speak as they must be recognised
gratefully by the whole party throughout England.
We have had several successive Secretaries who sometimes took the work
much off my hands, sometimes left it to fall very heavily on me and Miss
Lloyd. On one occasion, we two, having also lost the clerk, did the
entire work of the office for many weeks, inclusive of writing, editing,
folding, addressing, and actually _posting_ an issue of the
_Zoophilist_! But my toils and many of my anxieties ended when I was
fortunate enough to obtain the services, as Secretary, of Mr. Benjamin
Bryan, who had long shown his genuine interest in the cause as editor of
a Northern newspaper; and, after a year or two of work in concert with
him, I felt free to leave the whole burden on his shoulders and tendered
my resignation. The constant presence on the Committee of my long-tried
and most valued allies Mr. Ernest Bell, Capt. Pirkis, and Miss Marston
left me entirely at rest respecting the course of our future policy in
the straight direction of Prohibition.
The last event which I need record is a disagreeable incident which
occurred in the autumn of 1892. I had been seriously ill with acute
sciatica, and had been only partially relieved by a large subcutaneous
dose of morphia given me by my country doctor. In this state, with my
head still swimming and scarcely able to sit at a table, I found myself
involved in the most acrimonious newspaper controversy which I ever
remember to have seen in any respectable journal. It will be best that
another pen than mine should tell the story, so I will quote the calm
and lucid statement of the author of the excellent pamphlet,
“_Vivisection at the Folkestone Church Congress_” (page 6).
After a _résumé_ of the notorious debate at Folkestone the writer says:—
“The main point of attack in Mr. Victor Horsley’s paper was a book
called the _Nine Circles_ which had been published some months before,
and contained reports of different classes of cruel experiments on
animals, both in England and on the Continent. To this book Miss Cobbe
had given the sanction of her name, but she was not personally
responsible for any of the quotations, having intrusted the
compilation of the book to friends living in London, and who had
access to the journals and papers in which the experiments were
recorded. Mr. Horsley’s indignation was roused because in a certain
number of cases—22 out of the 170 narratives of different classes of
experiments, many of them involving a _series_, and the use of large
numbers of animals in each—the mention of the use of morphia or
chloroform was omitted. Miss Cobbe, in a letter to the _Times_ of
October 11th, while acknowledging that the compilers were bound to
quote the fact if stated, expressed her conviction that such
statements are misleading, because insensibility is not and cannot be
complete during the whole period of the experiment. Dr. Berdoe also
wrote in several papers defending Miss Cobbe against Mr. Horsley’s
imputations of fraud and intent to deceive, &c., and explaining that
the compilers of the book were alone responsible for the omissions. He
added, however, a further explanation that, as it was often the
painful results, and not the operations which caused them, that it was
desired to illustrate, and as these results lasted sometimes for many
days or weeks or months and to maintain insensibility during that
period was impossible, the omissions were not so important after
all.”...
“... The assailant, however, returned to the charge and in a more
violent style than before. His letter to the _Times_ of October 17th,
was a tirade against Miss Cobbe, worthy, as the _Spectator_ remarked,
only of the fifteenth century, in which the words ‘false’ and ‘lie’
were freely used. It was a letter of so libellous a character that it
is a matter for wonder that it obtained publication. Miss Cobbe very
naturally and properly at once retired from a controversy conducted,
as she expressed it in a letter to the _Times_, ‘outside of all my
experience of civilised journalism.’ She concluded with these words:
‘I need scarcely say that I maintain the veracity of every word of the
letter which you did me the honour to publish of the 15th inst., as
well as the _bona fides_ of all I have spoken or written on this or
other subjects during my three-score years and ten.’”
After a week or two I went to Bath to recruit my health after the attack
of sciatica; and the first newspaper I took up at the York Hotel,
contained a still more violent attack on me than those which had
preceded it. On reading it I walked into the telegraph office next door,
wired for rooms at my favourite South Kensington Hotel and went up to
town with my maid, presenting myself at once to our Committee, which
happened to be sitting and arranging for the impending meeting in St.
James’s Hall. “Shall I attend,” said I, “and speak, or not? I will do
exactly what you wish.” The Committee were unanimously of opinion that I
should go to the meeting and take part in the proceedings, and I have
ever since rejoiced that I did so. It was on the evening of October
27th. My ever kind friend, Canon Basil Wilberforce took the chair, Col.
Lockwood, Bishop Barry, Dr. Berdoe, Mr. Bell, and Captain Pirkis were on
the platform supporting me, but above all Mr. George W. E. Russell (then
Under Secretary of State for India) made a speech on my behalf for which
I shall feel grateful to him so long as I live. We had but slight
acquaintance previously, and I shall always feel that it was a most
generous and chivalrous action on his part to stand forth in so public a
manner as my champion on such an occasion. The audience was more than
sympathetic. There was a storm of genuine feeling when I rose to make my
explanation, and I found it, for once, hard to command my voice. This is
what I said, as reported in the _Zoophilist_, November 1st, 1892:
“Now to come to the story of the _Nine Circles_, which I will tell as
quickly as possible. When I gave up the Honorary Secretaryship of the
Victoria Street Society six years ago, I retired to live among the
mountains in Wales; and the chief thing which remained for me to do
was to publish as many pamphlets and papers as seemed likely to help
the cause. I have just got here my printer’s list of the papers which
I have printed in those six years. I have made up the totals, and I
find that the number in the six years of books, pamphlets, and
leaflets has been 320—that is about one a week—and that 271,350 copies
of them were printed; 173 papers having been written by myself.
(Cheers.) Some of these were adopted by the Society and honoured by
coming out under its auspices; and others I issued quite
independently. Amongst those which I issued ‘on my own hook,’ I am
happy to say, was this book called the _Nine Circles_. Therefore our
dear and honoured Society is not responsible for that book. I am alone
responsible; it was printed at my expense, and Messrs. Sonnenschein
published it for me. Therefore, I am the only person concerned with
it, and the Society has nothing to do with it. I am thankful to hear
that the revised edition will come out under the auspices of the
Society. My only privilege will be to pay for it, and that I shall
most thankfully do, in order to wipe out the wrong I have done as
concerns the present edition. When the present book was got up, I
sketched a plan of it, and asked a lady often employed by us who was
living in London, and is a good German scholar, to make extracts for
me. She knows a great deal about the subject; she also knows German
(which I do not do sufficiently for the purpose), and she was living
in London while I was 200 miles away. Therefore I asked her to make
the extracts of which this book is compiled, and it was afterwards
revised,—as Dr. Berdoe has told us,—by him. The book came out; and it
appears now that there are some mistakes in it. My assistant had left
out certain things which ought to have been stated. I took it for
granted,—I was quite wrong to do so,—that all my directions had been
carried out, and I made myself responsible for the book. Therefore,
whatever error there is in the matter is mine, and I beg that that
will be quite understood. (Cheers.) But what is all this tremendous
storm which has been raised, and this pulling of the house down about
these mistakes? Do they wish us to understand that there are no such
things as painful experiments in England? Apparently that is what they
are trying to make us think—that there never has been anything of the
kind; that they are perfectly incapable of putting any animal to pain.
Do they really mean that? Is that what they wish us to understand? If
they do _not_ mean that, I do not know what it is they mean. It seems
to me that they are raising this tremendous storm very much as if the
old slave-holders were to have danced a war-dance round Mrs. Stowe and
scalped her for having said that Legree had flogged Uncle Tom with a
thousand lashes, when really there were only nine hundred and
ninety-nine. (Laughter.) That seems to me to be the case in a
nutshell.”—_Zoophilist_, November 1st, 1892.
I had the gratification to receive soon after the following most kind
Address and expression of confidence from the leading Members of the
Victoria Street Society:—
ADDRESS.
_To Miss Frances Power Cobbe_,
We, the undersigned, being supporters of the Victoria Street Society,
and others interested in the movement against Vivisection, wish to
express the strong feeling of indignation with which we have seen your
integrity called in question by men who seem unable to conceive of the
pure unselfish devotion of high intellectual gifts to the service of
God’s humbler creatures.
It is impossible for those who know anything of the early history of
this movement to forget the great personal sacrifice at which you
undertook to make it the chief work of your life.
It is equally impossible for us who have watched its progress, to say
how highly we have esteemed the indomitable courage and forcible
eloquence with which you have exposed the evils inseparable from
experiments on living animals.
Further, we wish to record our firm conviction that you have,
throughout, recognised the wisdom and the duty of founding your attack
on Vivisection upon the truth, and nothing but the truth, so far as
you have been able to arrive at it.
We wish, in conclusion, to assure you not only of our special sympathy
with you at a time when you have been subjected to a personal attack
of an unusually coarse and violent character, but also of our
determination to give still more earnest support to the Cause to which
you have, at so great a cost, devoted yourself:
Strafford (_Earl of Strafford_)
Coleridge (_Lord Chief Justice_)
Worcester (_Marquis of Worcester_)
Haddington (_Earl of Haddington_)
Arthur, Bath and Wells (_Bishop of Bath and Wells_)
J., Manchester (_Bishop of Manchester_)
W. Walsham, Wakefield (_Bishop of Wakefield_)
H. B., Coventry (_Bishop of Coventry_)
John Mitchinson (_Bishop_)
F. Cramer-Roberts (_Bishop_)
Edward G. Bagshawe (_R. C. Bishop of Nottingham_)
Sidmouth (_Viscount Sidmouth_)
Pollington (_Viscount Pollington_)
Colville of Culross (_Lord Colville of Culross_)
Cardross (_Lord Cardross_)
H. Abinger (_Lady Abinger_)
Robartes (_Lord Robartes_)
Leigh (_Lord Leigh_)
C. Buchan (_Dow. Countess of Buchan_)
Harriet de Clifford (_Dow. Lady de Clifford_)
F. Camperdown (_Countess of Camperdown_)
Kinnaird (_Lord Kinnaird_)
Alma Kinnaird (_Lady Kinnaird_)
Clementine Mitford (_Lady Clementine Mitford_)
Eveline Portsmouth (_Dowager Countess of Portsmouth_)
Georgina Mount-Temple (_Lady Mount-Temple_)
H. Kemball (_Lady Kemball_)
J. Brotherton (_Lady Brotherton_)
Evelyn Ashley (_Hon. Evelyn Ashley_)
Bernard Coleridge (_Hon. B. Coleridge, M.P._)
Geraldine Coleridge (_Hon. Mrs. S. Coleridge_)
Stephen Coleridge (_Hon. Stephen Coleridge_)
George Duckett (_Sir George Duckett, Bt._)
Henry A. Hoare (_Sir Henry Hoare, Bt._)
Geo. F. Shaw, LL.D.
Samuel Smith, M.P.
Theodore Fry, M.P.
George W. E. Russell, M.P.
Jacob Bright, M.P.
Th. Burt, M.P.
Julius Barras (Colonel)
Richard H. Hutton
R. Payne Smith
H. Wilson White, D.D., LL.D.
Edward Whately (_Archdeacon Whately_)
George W. Cox (_Revd. Sir George Cox, Bart._)
R. M. Grier (_Prebendary Grier_)
Eleanor Vere C. Boyle (_Hon. Mrs. R. C. Boyle_)
E. G. Deane Morgan (_Hon. Mrs. Deane Morgan_)
Charles Bell Taylor, M.D.
Edward Berdoe, M.R.C.S.
Alex. Bowie, M.D., C.M.
John H. Clarke, M.D.
Henry Downes, M.D.
Henry M. Duncalfe
William Adamson, D.D.
William Adlam
Amelia E. Arnold
Ernest Bell
Rhoda Broughton
Olive S. Bryant
W. K. Burford
A. Gallenga and Mrs. Gallenga
Maria G. Grey
Emily A. E. Shirreff
Frances Holden
Eleanor Mary James
Francis Griffith Jones
E. J. Kennedy
Edith Leycester
W. S. Lilly
Mary Charlotte Lloyd
Ann Marston
Mary J. Martin
S. S. Munro
Frank Morrison
Harriet Morrison
Josiah Oldfield
Rose Pender
Fred. Pennington
Herbert Philips
Fred. E. Pirkis and Mrs. Pirkis
R. Ll. Price
Evelyn Price
R. M. Price
Lester Reed
Ellen Elcum Rees
J. Herbert Satchell
Mark Thornhill, J.P.
Looking back on this long struggle of twenty years, in which so much of
my happiness and the happiness of others dearer than myself, has been
engulfed, I can see that, starting from the apparently small and
subordinate question of Scientific Cruelty, the controversy has been
growing and widening till the whole department of ethics dealing with
man’s relation to the lower animals has gradually been included in it.
That this department is an obscure one, and that neither the Christian
Churches nor yet philosophic moralists have hitherto paid it sufficient
attention, is now admitted. That it is time that it should be carefully
studied and worked out, is also clear.
Sometimes I have thought (as by a law of our being we seem driven to do
whenever our hearts are deeply concerned) that a Divine guidance may
have presided over all the heart-breaking delays and disappointments of
this weary movement; and that it has not been allowed to terminate, as
it would certainly have done, had we carried our Bill of 1876 in its
original form through Parliament. _Then_ our Society would have
dissolved at once; and, after a time, perhaps, the Act, however well
designed, would have become more or less a dead letter; and the
hydra-heads of Vivisection would have reared themselves once more. But,
as it has actually happened, the delay and failure of our earlier
efforts and our consequent persistence in them, have fixed attention on
this culminating sin against the lower animals, and through it on all
other sins against them. A great revision of opinion on the subject is
undoubtedly taking place; and while some (especially Roman Catholic)
Zoophilists have diligently sought in decrees and manuals and treatises
of casuistry for some authority defining Cruelty to animals to be a Sin,
the poverty of the results of all such investigations, and of the
anxious collation of Biblical texts by Protestants, is gradually
revealing the fact that, in this whole department of human duty, we must
look to the God-enlightened consciences of _living_ men rather than to
the _dicta_ of departed saints, or casuists, whose attention was
directed exclusively to the relations of human beings with each other
and with God, and who obviously never contemplated those which we hold
to the brutes with adequate seriousness,—if at all. Of course we are
here met, just as the first anti-Slavery apostles were met, and as the
advocates of every fresh development of morality will be met for many a
day to come, by the fundamental fallacy of the Christian Churches (in
that respect resembling Islam) that there is a finality in Divine
teaching, and that they have been for two thousand years in possession
of the last word of God to man. Protestants are certainly not bound in
any way to occupy such a position, or to assume that a final revise has
ever been issued, or ever will be issued by Divine authority, of a
_Whole Duty of Man_. Rather are they called on piously and gratefully to
look for fresh light to come down, age after age, from the Father of
lights: or (if they please rather so to consider it) further development
of the Christian Spirit to be manifested as men learn better to
incarnate it in their minds and lives. As for Theists like myself, it is
natural for us and in accordance with all our opinions, to believe that
such a movement as is now taking place over the civilised world on
behalf of dumb animals, is a fresh Divine impulse of Mercy, stirring in
thousands of human hearts, and deserving of reverent cherishing and
thankful acceptance.
It is my supreme hope that when, with God’s help, our Anti-vivisection
controversy ends in years to come, long after I have passed away,
mankind will have attained _through it_ a recognition of our duties
towards the lower animals far in advance of that which we now commonly
hold. If the beautiful dream of the later Isaiah can never be perfectly
realised on this planet and none may ever find that thrice “Holy
Mountain” whereon they “shall not hurt nor destroy”—yet at least the
time will come when no man worthy of the name will take _pleasure_ in
killing; and he who would torture an animal will be looked upon as (in
the truest sense) “_inhuman_”; unworthy of the friendship of man or love
of woman. The long-oppressed and suffering brutes will then be spared
many a pang and their innocent lives made far happier; while the hearts
of men will grow more tender to their own kind by cultivating pity and
tenderness to the beasts and birds. The earth will at last cease to be
“full of violence and cruel habitations.”
September, 1898.
The too confident expectations which I entertained of my permanent
connection till death with the Society which I had founded and which I
designed to make my heir, have alas! been disappointed. It was perhaps
natural that in my long exile from London and consequent absence from
the Committee, my continual letters of enquiry, advice, and (as I fondly
and foolishly imagined) assistance in the work were felt to be
obtrusive,—especially by the newer members. One change after another in
the Constitution and in the Name of the Society, left me more or less in
opposition to the ruling spirits; and before long a much more serious
difference arose. The very able and energetic Hon. Sec., Hon. Stephen
Coleridge, (who had entered on his office in April, 1897), after making
the changes to which I have referred, proposed that we should introduce
a Bill into Parliament, no longer on the old lines, asking for the Total
Prohibition of Vivisection, but on quite a different basis; demanding
certain “Lesser Measures,” not yet distinctly formulated, but intended
to supply checks to the practical lawlessness of licensed Vivisectors.
Mr. Coleridge and his brother (now Lord Coleridge), had, twelve or
fourteen years before, urged me to abandon the demand for Total
Prohibition, and to adopt the policy of Restriction and bring in a bill
accordingly. But to this proposal I had made the most strenuous
resistance, writing a long pamphlet on the _Fallacy of Restriction_ for
the purpose; and it had been (as I thought), altogether given up and
forgotten. It would appear, however, that the idea remained in Mr.
Coleridge’s mind,—with the modification that he now regarded “Lesser
Measures” not as final Restriction, but as steps to Prohibition; and for
this policy he obtained the suffrage of the majority of the Council,
though not of the oldest members.