FOOTNOTES:
[21] A touching story of such sheep-gathering was recently told me on good authority. A shepherd lost his large flock on the Scotch mountains in a fog. After fruitless search, he returned to his cottage, bidding his collie find the sheep, if she could. The collie, who was near giving birth to her young, understood his orders, and disappeared in the mist, not returning for many hours. At last, she came home in miserable plight, driving before her the last stray sheep, and carrying in her mouth a puppy of her own! She had of necessity left the rest of her litter to perish on the hills and in the intervals of their birth the poor beast had performed her task and driven home the sheep. Her last puppy only she had contrived to save.
[22] The best effort to supply the missing chapter of ethics is the charming and eloquent volume, Rights of an Animal, by E. B. Nicholson. I thankfully recognize the candor wherewith the author has tackled the difficult problems of the case, and the value of his demonstration that the law of England assumes the fundamental principle that cruelty to an animal is an offence per se, and that it is not necessary to show that it injures any human owner or spectator. In this respect, as in all others, our Act (11 and 12 Vict. c. 39) immeasurably transcends the French Loi Grammont, which condemns only cruelty exhibited in public places and painful to the spectators. Mr. Nicholson justifies vivisection only so far as it can be rendered absolutely painless by anæsthetics. To such of us as have seen through that delusion, cadit quaestio.
[23] As a recent example of this doctrine, see an article in the Fortnightly Review for Feb. 1, 1882. “Is it not,” the author says, “the very basis of ethical doctrine(!) that the moral rights of any being depend on its ethical nature?”
[24] I have endeavored elsewhere to work out this hypothesis of an umpire between man and brute, as a method of helping us to a solution of the problem of what are and what are not lawful actions on our parts toward animals. The reader who may be interested in the inquiry may obtain my pamphlet, The Right of Tormenting, price 2d., at the office of the Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection, 1 Victoria Street, Westminster.
[25] In fact, many men who pursue such trades, notably butchers, are genuinely humane, and do their best to get through their work in the most merciful way. Several of them have recently expressed warm satisfaction on obtaining Baxter’s mask, whereby oxen may be instantaneously killed without the chance of a misdirected blow. The mask is to be obtained from Mr. Baxter, Ealing Dean, W.