[114] See de la Roche-Fontenelles, L’Église et la pitié envers animaux, passim.
[115] Rickaby, Moral Philosophy, p. 248 sqq. See also Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, p. 33; Clarke, ‘Cruelty to Animals,’ in The Month and Catholic Review, xxv. 401 sqq.; Hedley, ‘Dr. Mivart on Faith and Science,’ in Dublin Review, ser. iii. vol. xviii. 418.
[116] Clarke, in The Month and Catholic Review, xxv. 406.
[117] Cobbe, Modern Rack, p. 6.
It is not only theological moralists that maintain that animals can have no rights and that abstinence from wanton cruelty is a duty not to the animal but to man. This view has been shared by Kant[118] and by many later philosophers.[119] So also the legal protection of animals has often been vindicated merely on the ground that cruelty to animals might breed cruelty to men or shows a cruel disposition of mind,[120] or that it wounds the sensibilities of other people.[121] In ‘Parliamentary History and Review’ for 1825–1826 it is stated that no reason can be assigned for the interference of the legislator in the protection of animals unless their protection be connected, either directly or remotely, with some advantage to man.[122] The Bill for the abolition of bear-baiting and other cruel practices was expressly propounded on the ground that nothing was more conducive to crime than such sports, that they led the lower orders to gambling, that they educated them for thieves, that they gradually trained them up to bloodshed and murder.[123] The criminal code of the German Empire, again, imposes a fine upon any person “who spitefully tortures or cruelly ill-treats beasts, either publicly or in a manner to create scandal”[124]—in other words, he is punished, not because he puts the animal to pain, but because his conduct is offensive to his fellow men.
[118] Kant, Metaphysische Anfangungsgründe der Tugendlehre, § 16 sq., pp. 106, 108.
[119] E.g., Alexander, Moral Order and Progress, p. 281; Ritchie, Natural Rights, p. 110 sq.
[120] Hommel, quoted by von Hippel, Die Thielquälerei in der Strafgesetzgebung, p. 110. Tissot, Le droit pénal, i. 17. Lasson, System der Rechtsphilosophie, p. 548 sq.
[121] Lasson, op. cit. p. 548. von Hippel, op. cit. p. 125.
[122] Parliamentary History and Review, 1825–6, p. 761.