At no less than seven of our annual Meetings (at one of which he presided) did Cardinal Manning make speeches. All these I have myself reprinted in an ornamental pamphlet to be obtained at 20, Victoria Street. The reasons for his adoption of our Anti-vivisection cause, were, I am sure, mainly moral and humane; but I think an incident which occurred in Rome not long before our campaign began may have impressed on his mind a regret that the Catholic Church had hitherto done nothing on behalf of the lower animals, and a desire to take part himself in a humane crusade and so rectify its position before the Protestant world.
Pope Pio IX. had been addressed by the English in Rome through Lord Ampthill, (then Mr. Odo Russell, our representative there)—with a request for permission to found a Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Rome; where, (as all the world knows) it was almost as deplorably needed as at Naples. After a considerable delay, the formal reply through the proper Office, was sent to Mr. Russell refusing the (indispensable) permission. The document conveying this refusal expressly stated that “a Society for such a purpose could not be sanctioned in Rome. Man owed duties to his fellow men; but he owed no duties to the lower animals therefore, though such societies might exist in Protestant countries they could not be allowed to be established in Rome.”
The late Lord Arthur Russell, coming back from Italy to England just after this event, told me of it with great detail, and assured me that he had seen the Papal document in his brother’s possession; and that if I chose to publish the matter in England, he would guarantee the truth of the story at any time. I did very much choose to publish it, thinking it was a thing which ought to be proclaimed on the housetops; and I repeated it in seven or eight different publications, ranging from the Quarterly Review to the Echo. Soon after this, if I remember rightly, began the Anti-vivisection movement, and almost immediately when the Society for Protection of Animals from Vivisection (afterwards called the Victoria Street Society) was founded, by Dr. Hoggan and myself, Cardinal Manning gave us his name and active support. He took part in our first Deputation to the Home Office, and spoke at our first meeting, which was held on the 10th June, 1876, at the Westminster Palace Hotel. On that occasion, when it came to the Cardinal’s turn to speak, he began at once to say that “Much misapprehension existed as to the attitude of his Church on the subject of duty to animals.” [As he said this, with his usual clear, calm, deliberate enunciation, he looked me straight in the face and I looked at him!] He proceeded to say: “It was true that man owed no duty directly to the brutes, but he owed it to God, whose creatures they are, to treat them mercifully.”
This was, I considered a very good way of reconciling adhesion to the Pope’s doctrine, with humane principles; and I greatly rejoiced that such a mezzo-termine could be put forward on authority. Of course in my private opinion the Cardinal’s ethics were theoretically untenable, seeing that if it were possible to conceive of such a thing as a creature made by a man, (as people in the thirteenth century believed that Arnaldus de Villa-Nova had made a living man), or even such a thing as a creature made by the Devil,—that most wretched being would still have a right to be spared pain if he were sensitive to pain; and would assuredly be a proper object of measureless compassion. That a dog or horse is a creature of God; that its love and service to us come of God’s gracious provisions for us; that the animal is unoffending to its Creator, while we are suppliants for forgiveness for our offences; all these are true and tender reasons for additional kindness and care for these our dumb fellow-creatures. But they are not (as the Cardinal’s argument would seem to imply) the only reasons for showing mercy towards them.
Nevertheless it was a great step,—I may say an historical event,—that a principle practically including universal humanity to the lower animals, should have been enunciated publicly and formally by a “Prince of the Church” of Rome. That Cardinal Manning was not only the first great Roman prelate to lay down any such principle, but that he far outran many of his contemporaries and co-religionists in so doing, has become painfully manifest this year (1894) from the numerous letters from priests which have appeared in the Tablet and Catholic Times, bearing a very different complexion. Cardinal Manning repeated almost verbatim the same explanation of his own standpoint in his speech on March 9th, 1887, when he occupied the chair at our Annual Meeting. He said:
“It is perfectly true that obligations and duties are between moral persons, and therefore the lower animals are not susceptible of those moral obligations which we owe to one another; but we owe a seven-fold obligation to the Creator of those animals. Our obligation and moral duty is to Him who made them, and, if we wish to know the limit and the broad outline of our obligation, I say at once it is His Nature and His perfections; and, among those perfections, one is most profoundly that of eternal mercy. (Hear, hear.) And, therefore, although a poor mule or a poor horse is not indeed a moral person, yet the Lord and Maker of that mule and that horse is the highest law-giver, and His Nature is a law to Himself. And, in giving a dominion over His creatures to man, He gave them subject to the condition that they should be used in conformity to His own perfections, which is His own law, and, therefore, our law.”
On the first occasion a generous Roman Catholic nobleman present gave me £20 to have the Cardinal’s speech translated into Italian and widely circulated in Italy.
I have good reason to believe that when Cardinal Manning went to Rome after the election of Leo XIII., he spoke earnestly to his Holiness on the subject of cruelty to animals generally in Italy, and especially concerning Vivisection, and that he understood the Pope to agree with him and sanction his attitude. I learned this from a private source, but his Eminence referred to it quite unmistakeably in his speech at Lord Shaftesbury’s house on the 21st June, 1882, as follows:—
“I am somewhat concerned to say it, but I know that an impression has been made that those whom I represent look, if not with approbation, at least with great indulgence, at the practice of Vivisection. I grieve to say that abroad there are a great many (whom I beg 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. There may be the chatter, the prating, and the talk of those who know nothing about it. And I know what I have stated to be the fact, for some years ago I took a step known to our excellent secretary, and brought the subject under the notice and authority where alone I could bring it. And those before whom it was laid soon proved to have been profoundly ignorant of the outlines of the alphabet even of Vivisection. They believed entirely that the practice of surgery and the science of anatomy owed everything to the discoveries of vivisectors. They were filled to the full with every false impression, but when the facts were made known to them, they experienced a revulsion of feeling.”
Cardinal Manning also, (as I happen likewise to know) made a great effort about 1878 or 1879, to induce the then General of the Franciscans, to support the Anti-vivisection movement for love of St. Francis, and his tenderness to animals. In this attempt, however, Cardinal Manning must have been entirely unsuccessful, as no modern Franciscan that ever I have heard of, has stirred a finger on behalf of animals anywhere, or given his name to any Society for protecting them, either from vulgar or from scientific cruelty. Knowing this, I confess to feeling some impatience when the name of St. Francis and his amiable fondness for birds and beasts is perpetually flaunted whenever the lack of common humanity to animals visible in Catholic countries happens to be mentioned. It is a very small matter that a Saint, six hundred years ago, sang with nightingales and fed wolves, if the monks of his own Order and the priests of the Church which has canonised him, never warn their flocks that to torment God’s creatures is even a venial sin, and when forced to notice barbarous cruelties to a brute, invariably reply, “Non è Cristiano,” as if all claims to compassion were dismissed by that consideration!