prophets of dietetic reformation. Yet there is uncertainty as to his
birthplace. One account represents him to have been born in London,
and to have been the son of a brewer. Another statement, which appears
to be more authentic, reports his place of birth to have been in the
neighbourhood of Leicester, and his father to have been a farmer. What
is of more permanent interest is the account preserved of the reason
of his first revolt from the practice of kreophagy. Disliking the
business of farming, it seems, while yet quite young, not without the
acquiescence of his parents, he had adventurously sought his living, on
his own account, in the metropolis. What, if any, plans had been formed
by him is not known; but it is certain that he soon found himself
in imminent danger of starvation, and, after brief trial, he gladly
re-sought his home. Upon his return to the farm, he found awaiting him
the welcome of the “Prodigal Son”--although, happily, he had no just
claim to the title of that well-known character. A “fatted calf” was
killed, and the boy shared in the dish with the rest of the family.
It was not until after the feast that he learned that the slaughtered
calf had been his especial favourite and playmate. So revolting to
his keener sensibility was the consciousness of this fact, that he
registered a vow never again to live upon the products of slaughter.
To this determination he adhered during the remainder of his long
life.[248]
His next venture, and first choice of a profession, while he was still
quite young, led him to engage in teaching. As an advertisement he
placed a flag at the door of a house in which he rented a room, where
he gave elementary instruction to such children as were entrusted to
his tuition by the townspeople of Leicester. The experiment proved not
very successful, and at the end of a twelvemonth he tried his fortune
elsewhere. He next turned to commerce--at first in a humble fashion.
His business prospered, and his next important undertaking was the
establishment of a newspaper--the _Leicester Herald_. This journal
was what is now called a “Liberal” paper. Yet by those who affected
to identify the welfare of England with the continued existence of
rotten boroughs and other corruptions, it was held up to opprobrium as
revolutionary and “incendiary.” Phillips himself had the reputation
of an able political writer; but the chief support of the journal was
the celebrated Dr. Priestley, whose name and contributions gave it a
reputation it otherwise might not have gained. The responsible editor
did not escape the perils that then environed the denouncers of legal
or social iniquity, and Phillips, convicted of a “misdemeanour,” was
sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in the Leicester jail. During
his imprisonment he displayed the beneficence of his disposition in
relieving the miseries of some of his more wretched companions. Upon
his release, he sold his interest in the _Leicester Herald_, and for
some time confined himself altogether to his business.
Leaving Leicester he migrated to London and set up a hosiery
establishment, which, however, he soon converted into the more
congenial bookshop. It was the success of the _Leicester Herald_
that, probably, led him to think of starting a new periodical. Upon
consultation with Priestley and other friends he was encouraged to
proceed, and the _Monthly Magazine_ was the result. It commenced in
July 1795 and proved to be a most decided success. At first conducted
by Priestley, it was afterwards partly under the editorship of Dr.
Aikin, author of the _Country Around Manchester_. The proprietors
shared in the management of the magazine, but to what extent it is
difficult to ascertain. Amongst the contributors was “Peter Pindar,”
so well known as the author, amongst other satirical rhymes, of the
verses upon George III., perplexed by the celebrated “apple dumpling.”
The monthly receipts from the sale amounted to £1,500. A quarrel
with Aikin was followed by the resignation of the editor. Increase
of business soon led to a removal of the publishing-house from St.
Paul’s Churchyard to a much larger establishment in Blackfriars. His
home was at Hampstead where, in a beautiful neighbourhood and in an
elegant villa, the opulent publisher enjoyed the refined pleasures
which his humaneness of living, as well as beneficent industry, had
justly deserved. At this time he began a correspondence with C. J.
Fox, on the subject of the History of James II., upon which the famous
Whig statesman was then engaged. Four letters addressed to him by
Fox have been printed, but they have no special importance. He was
already married, and the story of his courtship has more than the mere
gossiping interest of ordinary biography. Upon his first arrival in
London, he had taken lodgings in the house of a milliner. One of her
assistants was a Miss Griffiths, a beautiful young Welsh girl, who,
learning the unconquerable aversion of their guest from the common
culinary barbarism, had amiably volunteered to prepare his dishes on
strictly anti-kreophagist principles. This incident induced a sympathy
and friendship which speedily resulted in a proposal of marriage. They
were a handsome pair; and a somewhat precipitate matrimonial alliance
was followed by many years of unmixed happiness for both.
In 1807 the “Livery” of London elected him to the office of High
Sheriff of the City and County of Middlesex for the ensuing year. This
responsible post put to the proof the sincerity of his professions as
a reformer. Nor did he fail in the trial. During his term of power he
effected many improvements in the treatment of the real or pretended
criminals who, as occupants of the jails, came under his jurisdiction.
No one who has read Howard’s _State of the Prisons_, published thirty
years before Phillips’ entrance upon his office, or even general
accounts of them, needs to be told that they were the very nurseries
of disease, vice, misery, and crime of all kinds--one of the many
everlasting disgraces of the governments and civilisation of the day.
Nor had they been appreciably improved during the interval of thirty
years.
The new Sheriff daily visited Newgate and the Fleet prisons and, by
personal inquiry, made himself acquainted with the actual state of the
occupants, and in many ways was able to ameliorate their condition. By
his direction several collecting boxes were conspicuously displayed,
and the alms collected were applied to the relief of the families of
destitute debtors. He further insisted that persons, whose indictments
had been ignored by the grand jury, should not be detained in the
foul and pestilential atmosphere, as was then the case, but should be
immediately released.
In his admirable _Letter to the Livery of London_, he begins with an
appeal to the common sentiments of humanity which ought to have some
influence with those in authority. He reminds his readers that:--
“It is too much the fashion to exclude _feeling_ from the
business of public life, and a total absence of it is considered
as a necessary qualification in a public man. Among statesmen
and politicians he is considered as weak and incompetent who
suffers natural affection to have any influence on his political
calculations.”
In a note to this passage he adds:--
“It appears to me that political errors of all kinds arise, in
a great degree, from the studied banishment of feeling from the
consideration of statesmen. Reasoning frequently fails us from
a false estimate of the premises on which our deductions are
founded. But _feeling_, which, in most respects, is synonymous
with conscience, is almost always right. Statesmen are apt to view
society as a machine, the several parts of which must be made by
them to perform their respective functions for the success of
the whole. The comparison is often made, but the analogy is not
perfect. The parts of the social machine are made up of sensitive
beings, each of whom (though in the obscurest situation) is
equal, in all the affections of our nature, to those in the most
conspicuous places. The harmony and happiness of the whole will
depend on the _degree_ of feeling exercised by the directors and
prime movers.”
After this preliminary exhortation, he presents to their contemplation
an appalling revelation of the stupid cruelties of the criminal law
and its administration. He gives a graphic account of the jail of
Newgate--both of the felons’ and the debtors’ division. The dimensions
of the entire building were 105 yards by 40 yards, of which only
one-fourth part was used by the prisoners. Into this space were crowded
sometimes seven or eight hundred, never less than four or five hundred,
human beings of both sexes and of all ages. “Felons” and debtors seem
to have fared pretty much the same, and filth, fever, and starvation
prevailed in all parts of the jail alike. The women prisoners he
describes as pressed together so closely as, upon lying down, to
leave no atom of space between their bodies. As for the results of
this neglect on the part of the State, he finds it impossible to draw
an adequate picture of them, and is at a loss to imagine how the whole
city is not carried off by a plague. By persevering energy he obtained
some reformation, although he failed in his proposal for a new building.
As to the individual occupants of these pest-houses, he found a large
number whose offences were comparatively of an innocent kind, but who
were herded with the most savage criminals. He espoused the cause
of several of these prisoners--especially of the women--who, after
some years of incarceration, were frequently drifted off to Botany
Bay, which, besides its other terrors, was for almost all of them a
perpetual separation from their homes, their husbands, and families.
Twice he vainly addressed a memorial to the Secretary of State (Lord
Hawkesbury) on their behalf. The traditions and routine of office were
too powerful even for his persistent energy.
Romilly had lately introduced his measure for amendment of the
barbarous and bloody penal code of this country. Sir Richard Phillips
addressed to him also a thoughtful letter, in which were pointed out
some of the more glaring abuses in the administration of the laws, with
which his official experience as High Sheriff had made him familiar.
When Mansfield was Lord Chief Justice, and Thurlow Lord Chancellor,
the hangings were so numerous that, as he informs us, on one “hanging
holiday” he saw nineteen persons on the gallows, the eldest of whom
was not twenty-two years of age. The larger number, probably, had
been sentenced to this barbarous death for theft of various kinds.
Three hundred years had passed away since the animadversions of
More (_before_ his accession to office) in the _Utopia_, and some
half-century since Beccaria and Voltaire had protested against this
monstrous iniquity of criminal legislation, without effect, in England,
at least. As far as their contemporaries and their successors for long
afterwards were concerned these philanthropists had written wholly in
vain.
In the letter to Romilly Phillips insists particularly upon the
following reforms: (1) No prisoner to be placed in irons before trial.
(2) None to be denied free access of friends or legal advisers. (3)
None to be deprived of adequate means of subsistence--14 ounces of
bread then being the _maximum_ of allowance of food. (4) Every prisoner
to be discharged as soon as the grand jury shall have thrown out the
bill of indictment. (5) Abolition of payment to jailors by exactions
forced from the most destitute prisoners, and of various other
exorbitant or illegal fines and extortions. (6) Separation of lunatic
from other occupants of the jails. (7) That counsel be provided for
those too poor to pay for themselves.
In 1811 Phillips published his _Treatise on the Powers and Duties of
Juries, and on the Criminal Laws of England_. Three years later _Golden
Rules for Jurymen_, which he afterwards expanded into a book entitled
_Golden Rules of Social Philosophy_ (1826), in which he lays down rules
of conduct for the ordinary business of life--lawyers, clergymen,
schoolmasters, and others being the objects of his admonitions. It is
in this work that the civic dignitary--so “splendidly false” to the
habits of his class--sets forth at length the principles upon which his
unalterable faith in the truth of humanitarian dietetics was founded.
The reasons of this “true confession” are fully and perspicuously
specified, and the first forms the key-note of the rest:--[249]
“1. _Because_, being mortal himself, and holding his life on the
same uncertain and precarious tenure as all other sensitive beings,
he does not find himself justified by any supposed superiority or
inequality of condition in destroying the enjoyment of existence of
any other mortal, except in the necessary defence of his own life.
“2. _Because_ the desire of life is so paramount, and so
affectingly cherished in all sensitive beings, that he cannot
reconcile it to his feelings to destroy or become a voluntary party
in the destruction of any innocent living being, however much in
his power, or apparently insignificant.
“3. _Because_ he feels the same abhorrence from devouring flesh in
general that he hears carnivorous men express against eating human
flesh, or the flesh of Horses, Dogs, Cats, or other animals which,
in some countries, it is not customary for carnivorous men to
devour.
“4. _Because_ Nature seems to have made a superabundant provision
for the nourishment of [frugivorous] animals in the saccharine
matter of Roots and Fruits, in the farinaceous matter of Grain,
Seed, and Pulse, and in the oleaginous matter of the Stalks,
Leaves, and Pericarps of numerous vegetables.
“5. _Because_ he feels an utter and unconquerable repugnance
against receiving into his stomach the flesh or juices of deceased
animal organisation.
“6. _Because_ the destruction of the mechanical organisation of
vegetables inflicts no sensible suffering, nor violates any moral
feeling, while vegetables serve to sustain his health, strength,
and spirits above those of most carnivorous men.
“7. _Because_ during thirty years of rigid abstinence from the
flesh and juices of deceased sensitive beings, he finds that he has
not suffered a day’s serious illness, that his animal strength and
vigour have been equal or superior to that of other men, and that
his mind has been fully equal to numerous shocks which he has had
to encounter from malice, envy, and various acts of turpitude in
his fellow-men.
“8. _Because_ observing that carnivorous propensities among animals
are accompanied by a total want of sympathetic feelings and gentle
sentiments--as in the Hyæna, the Tiger, the Vulture, the Eagle, the
Crocodile, and the Shark--he conceives that the practice of these
carnivorous tyrants affords no worthy example for the imitation or
justification of rational, reflecting, and _conscientious_ beings.
“9. _Because_ he observes that carnivorous men, unrestrained by
reflection or sentiment, even refine on the most cruel practices
of the most savage animals [of other species], and apply their
resources of mind and art to prolong the miseries of the victims
of their appetites--bleeding, skinning, roasting, and boiling
animals alive, and torturing them without reservation or remorse,
if they thereby add to the variety or the delicacy of their
carnivorous gluttony.
“10. _Because_ the natural sentiments and sympathies of human
beings, in regard to the killing of other animals, are generally
so averse from the practice that few men or women could devour the
animals whom _they might be obliged themselves to kill_; and yet
they forget, or affect to forget, the living endearments or dying
sufferings of the being, while they are wantoning over his remains.
“11. _Because_ the human stomach appears to be naturally so averse
from receiving the remains of animals, that few could partake
of them if they were not disguised and flavoured by culinary
preparation; yet rational beings ought to feel that the prepared
substances are not the less what they truly are, and _that no
disguise of food, in itself loathsome_, ought to delude the
unsophisticated perceptions of a considerate mind.
“12. _Because_ the forty-seven millions of acres in England and
Wales _would maintain in abundance as many human inhabitants_,
if they lived wholly on grain, fruits, and vegetables; but they
sustain only twelve millions [in 1811] _scantily_, while animal
food is made the basis of human subsistence.
“13. _Because_ animals do not present or contain the substance of
food in mass, like vegetables; every part of their economy being
subservient to their mere existence, and their entire frames being
solely composed of blood necessary for life, of bones for strength,
of muscles for motion, and of nerves for sensation.
“14. _Because_ the practice of killing and devouring animals can
be justified by no moral plea, by no physical benefit, nor _by any
just allegation of necessity in countries where there is abundance
of vegetable food_, and where the arts of gardening and husbandry
are favoured by social protection, and by the genial character of
the soil and climate.
“15. _Because_ wherever the number and hostility of predatory land
animals might so tend to prevent the cultivation of vegetable food
as to render it necessary to destroy and, perhaps, to eat them,
there could in that case exist no necessity for destroying the
animated existences of the distinct elements of air and water; and,
as in most civilised countries, there exist no land animals besides
those which are properly bred for slaughter or luxury, of course
the destruction of mammals and birds in such countries must be
ascribed either to unthinking wantonness or to carnivorous gluttony.
“16. _Because_ the stomachs of locomotive beings appear to have
been provided for the purpose of conveying about with the moving
animal nutritive substances, analogous in effect to the soil in
which are fixed the roots of plants and, therefore, nothing ought
to be introduced into the stomach for digestion and for absorption
by the _lacteals_, or roots of the animal system, but the natural
bases of simple nutrition--as the saccharine, the oleaginous, and
the farinaceous matter of the vegetable kingdom.”[250]
Perhaps his most entertaining book is his _Morning Walk from London
to Kew_ (1817). In it he avails himself of the various objects on his
road for instructive moralising--as, for example, when he meets with
a mutilated soldier, on the frightful waste and cruelty of war; or
with a horse struggling up a precipitous hill in agony of suffering
from the torture of the bearing-rein, on the common forms of selfish
cruelty; or again, when he deplores the incalculable waste of food
resources, by the careless indifferentism of owners of land and of the
State in allowing the country to remain encumbered with useless, or
comparatively useless, timber, in place of planting it with valuable
fruit trees of various sorts according to the nature of the soil.
His next publication of importance was his _Million of Facts and
Correct Data and Elementary Constants in the entire Circle of the
Sciences, and on all Subjects of Speculation and Practice_ (1832) 8vo.
It is this work by which, perhaps, Phillips is now most known--an
immense collection and, although many of the “Constants” may be open
to criticism or have already become obsolete, it may still be examined
with interest. The plan of the work is that of a classified collection
of scraps of information on all the arts and sciences. It was so
popular that five large editions were published in seven years. His
preface to the stereotyped edition is dated 1839. He remarks that
“his pretensions for such a task are a prolonged and uninterrupted
intercourse with books and men of letters. He has, for forty-nine
years, been occupied as the literary conductor of various public
journals of reputation; he has superintended the press in the printing
of many hundred books in every branch of human pursuit, and he has been
intimately associated with men celebrated for their attainments in each
of them.” In the facts concerning anatomy and physiology will be found
references to scientific and other authorities upon the subject of
flesh-eating.
Occasionally we meet with biographical facts of special interest.
Thus, he says that, early in 1825, he suggested the first idea of the
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge to Dr. Birkbeck and then,
by his advice, to Lord Brougham. His idea was the establishment of a
fund for selling or giving away books and tracts, after the manner of
the Religious Tract Society. As regards his astronomic paradoxes, his
theory, in opposition to the Newtonian, that the phenomena attributed
to gravitation are, in reality, the “proximate effects of the orbicular
and rotatory motions of the earth” (for which he was severely
criticised by Professor De Morgan), exhibits at least the various
activity, if not the invariable infallibility, of his mental powers.
A work of equal interest with a _Million of Facts_ is his next
compilation--_A Dictionary of the Arts of Life and Civilisation_
(1833). Under the article _Diet_ he well remarks:--
“Some regard it as a purely _egotistical_ question whether men live
on flesh or on vegetables. But others mix with it moral feelings
towards animals. If theory prescribed _human_ flesh, the former
party would lie in wait to devour their brethren; but the latter,
regarding the value of life to all that breathe, consider that,
even in a balance of argument, feelings of sympathy ought to turn
the scale.... We see all the best animal and social qualities in
mere vegetable-feeders.... Beasts of prey are necessarily solitary
and fearful, even of one another. Physiologists, themselves
carnivorous, differ on the subject, but they never take into
account _moral_ considerations.
“Though it is known that the Hindus and other Eastern peoples live
wholly on rice--that the Irish and Scotch peasantry subsist on
potatoes and oatmeal--and that the labouring poor of all countries
live on the food, of which an acre yields one hundred times more
than of flesh, while they enjoy unabated health and long life--yet
an endless play of sophistry is maintained about the alleged
necessity of killing and devouring animals.
“At twelve years of age the author of this volume was struck with
such horror in accidentally seeing the barbarities of a London
slaughter-house, that since that hour he has never eaten anything
but vegetables. He persevered, in spite of vulgar forebodings,
with unabated vigorous health; and at sixty-six finds himself more
able to undergo any fatigue of mind and body than any other person
of his age. He quotes himself because the case, in so carnivorous
a country, is uncommon--especially in the grades of society in
which he has been accustomed to live.... On principle he does not
abstain from any _vegetable_ luxuries or from fermented liquors;
but any indulgence in the latter requires (he hastens to add) the
correction of carbonate of soda. He is always in better health when
water is his sole beverage; and such is the case with all who have
imitated his practice.”[251]
Under the article “Farming,” he observes that “a man who eats 1lb.
of flesh eats the exact equivalent of 6lbs. of wheat, and 128lbs. of
potatoes.” That is, that he, in such proportion, wastes the national
resources of a country.