In a letter to the London Times in December, 1884, Miss Cobbe writes as follows:
TO THE EDITOR.
Sir,—In your article on this subject on Saturday last you called upon the opponents of vivisection to answer certain questions. As I have been intrusted for many years with the hon. secretaryship of the leading anti-vivisectionist society, I beg to offer you the following replies to those questions:—
You ask first, Do we "deny that vivisection is capable of yielding knowledge of service to man?" We are not so rash as to deny that any practice, even the most immoral conceivable, might possibly yield knowledge of service to man; and, in particular, we do not deny that the vivisection of human beings by the surgeons of classic times, and again by the great anatomists of Italy in the 15th century, may very possibly have yielded knowledge to man, and be capable, if revived, of yielding still more. We have, however, for a long time back called on the advocates of the vivisection of dogs, monkeys, &c., to furnish evidence of the beneficial results of their work, not as setting at rest the question of its morality, but as an indispensable preliminary to justify them in coming into the court of public opinion as defendants of a practice obviously (as the Royal Commissioners reported) "liable from its very nature to great abuse."
We must be excused if we now hold it to be demonstrated that, whether vivisection be or be not "capable of yielding useful knowledge," it certainly yields only a scanty crop of it. Were there anything like an abundant harvest, such a sample as this would not have been produced with so much pomp for public scrutiny. In short, we think with Dr. Leffingwell that, "if pain could be measured by money, there is no mining company in the world which would sanction prospecting in such barren regions."
You ask us, Sir, secondly, "Do we affirm that the benefit of mankind is not an adequate or sufficient justification for the infliction of pain on animals?" We have two answers to this question.
Assuming that by vivisection benefits might be obtained for human bodies, we hold that the evil results of the practice on human minds would more than counterbalance any such benefits. The cowardice and pitilessness involved in tying down a dog on a table and slowly mangling its brain, its eyes, its entrails; the sin committed against love and fidelity themselves when a creature capable of dying of grief on his master's grave is dealt with as a mere parcel of material tissues, "valuable for purposes of research"—these are basenesses for which no physical advantages would compensate, and the prevalence of such a heart-hardening process among our young men would, we are convinced, detract more from the moral interests of our nation than a thousand cases of recovery from disease would serve those of a lower kind. Even life itself ought not to be saved by such methods, any more than by the cannibalism of the men of the "Mignonette."
Our second answer is yet more brief. We do not "deny that the benefit of man is a sufficient justification for inflicting pain upon animals," provided that pain is kept within moderate bounds, nor yet to taking life from them in a quick and careful manner. But we do deny the right of man to inflict torture upon brutes, and thus convert their lives from a blessing into a curse. Such torture has been inflicted upon tens of thousands of animals by vivisection; and no legislation that ingenuity can devise will, we believe, suffice to guard against the repetition of it so long as it is sanctioned in any way as a method of research. The use of vivisection—if it have any use—is practically inseparable from abuse. We therefore call upon our countrymen to forego the poor bribes of possible use which are offered to them, and of which we have now seen a "unique and impressive" example, and generously and manfully to say of vivisection as they once said of slavery "We will have none of it."
I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
Frances Power Cobbe.
Hengwrt, Dolgelly, Dec. 28, 1884.