VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY
Cardinal Manning was among the early supporters of the Anti-Vivisection
movement, and was a Vice-President of the National Anti-Vivisection
Society till his death.
He occasionally attended meetings of the committee at my request to
assist the deliberations with his good counsel, and I remember one
occasion when Lord Shaftesbury came and took the chair, and both the
Cardinal and my father and the Bishop of Oxford were present to assist in
an important decision.
I frequently went to the Archbishop's house at Westminster to consult
him; the sumptuous cathedral and palace had not then been built, and the
house at the bottom of Carlisle Place had an air of cold austerity; there
were no carpets on the stone staircase, and the large room in which the
Cardinal received his visitors had nothing in it but a bare table and a
few cushionless chairs. He accepted invitations to dinner from my
father, but although he was gracious and courtly, he ate nothing, and it
was understood that no attention was to be drawn to this abstinence. He
cannot have eaten much anywhere, for he was extremely emaciated.
He did a great service both to the cause of anti-vivisection and to his
Church in 1882. It had been spread abroad, by whom, and on what
authority, I know not, that the Church of Rome had declined to support
those who desired to put down cruel experiments upon animals, and had
declared that animals might lawfully be treated like stocks and stones;
to this shocking suggestion the Cardinal gave a decisive and
authoritative denial at a meeting at Lord Shaftesbury's House on the 21st
of June.
His words were as follows:--
I know that an impression has been made that those whom I represent
look, if not with approbation, at least with great indulgence, on the
practice of vivisection. I grieve to say that abroad there are a
great many (whom I beg leave to say I do _not_ represent) who do
favour the practice; but this I do protest, that there is not a
religious instinct in nature, nor a religion of nature, nor is there
a word in revelation, either in the Old Testament or the New
Testament, nor is there to be found in the great theology which I do
represent, no, nor in any Act of the Church of which I am a member;
no, nor in the lives and utterances of any one of those great
servants of that Church who stand as examples, nor is there an
authoritative utterance anywhere to be found in favour of
vivisection.
And later in the same speech he said:--
I do not believe this to be the way that the All-wise and All-good
Maker of us all has ordained for the discovery of the Healing Art
which is one of His greatest gifts to man.
Two years later at a Meeting at Prince's Hall on the 26th of June, 1884,
with Lord Shaftesbury in the Chair, the Cardinal in a single pregnant
sentence dissipated the vivisectors' constant careless confusion of the
totally different moral acts of killing animals and torturing them.
"It is clear," he said, "that the words 'kill and eat,' and the dominion
which the beneficent Maker of all things has given to man over the lower
creatures, does not justify the infliction of exquisite torment in the
name of Science."
At that time Lord Shaftesbury was the greatest representative of the
Church of England and the Cardinal the acknowledged head of the Church of
Rome in this country and as they earnestly agreed in condemning the
practice of vivisection as wicked and abominable, it becomes impossible
for those who support it to bring to its defence any authorities on
conduct at all comparable with that of these two great and good men.
The Cardinal gave the impression of a consciously eminent
ecclesiastic, who was determined to lift his Church into greatness in
England by all lawful means in his power; his appearance was ascetic,
distinguished, and memorable; he was manifestly a man of direct
nobility of life, and most lofty purpose--a great statesman for his
Church, leading an austere and detached life as an example in every
detail for the faithful in his community--a prince of the Roman
Church fulfilling his august function conspicuously and faultlessly
in full view of a critical public. {16}
His care for the poor and the noble simplicity of his life found its most
eloquent evidence at his death in the discovery that his entire worldly
possessions amounted to sixty-eight pounds.
He had laid up his treasure where no rust and moth doth corrupt.