“On Wednesday afternoon last, Dr. Lyon Playfair laid on the table of the House of Commons a Bill for the Restriction of Vivisection, which has been drawn up by physiologists, no doubt in part, in the interest of physiological science, but also in part, no doubt in the interest of humanity. The contents of this Bill are the best answer which it is possible to give to the ignorant attack made in a daily contemporary on Tuesday on Lord Henniker’s Bill, introduced into the House of Lords last week. The two Bills differ in principle only on one important point. Both of them clearly have been maturely considered by men of science as well as by humanitarians. Both of them assume the great and increasing character of the evil which has to be dealt with. Both of them approach that evil in the same manner, by insisting that scientific experiments which are painful to animals shall be tried only on the avowed responsibility of men of the highest education, whose right to try them may be withdrawn if it be abused. Both of them aim at compelling the physiologists who are permitted to try such experiments at all, to use anæsthetics throughout the experiment, whenever the use of anæsthetics is not fatal to the investigation itself.... The Bills differ, however, on a most important point. It is certain that all the contempt showered on Lord Henniker’s Bill by the ignorant assailants of the humanitarian party might equally have been showered on Dr. Lyon Playfair’s. But Lord Henniker’s Bill contemplates making physiological and pathological experiments on living animals, even under complete anæsthesia, illegal, except under the same responsibility and on the same conditions as those experiments which are not, and cannot be, conducted under complete anæsthesia,—while Dr. Lyon Playfair leaves all experiments conducted under anæsthetics,—and will practically, though not theoretically, leave, we fear, those which only PROFESS to be so conducted (a very different thing),—as utterly without restriction as they now are. Indeed, it attempts no sort of limitation upon them. If a whole hecatomb of guinea-pigs, or even dogs, were known to be imported, and their carcases exported daily from the private house of any man who declared that he always used anæsthetics, Dr. Playfair’s Bill provides, we believe, no sort of machinery by which the truth of his assertion could be even tested.... It is, however, no small matter to have obtained this clear admission on scientific authority that the victimisation of animals in the interest of science is an evil of a growing and serious kind which needs legislative interference, and calls for at least the threat of serious penalties....”
In short, the Bill promoted by the physiologists and Mr. Darwin, was, like the Resolutions of the Liverpool British Association, a “Pious Opinion” or Brutum fulmen. Nothing more.
The Royal Commission on Vivisection was issued, as I have said, on the 22nd June, 1875, and the Report was dated January 8th, 1876. The intervening months were filled with anxiety. I heard constantly all that went on at the Commission, and my hopes and fears rose and fell week by week. Of the constitution of the Commission much might be said. Writing of it in the British Friend, May, 1876, the late Mr. J. B. Firth, M.P., Q.C., remarked:—
“If it were possible for a Royal Commission to be appointed to inquire into the practice of Thuggee, I should have very little confidence in their report if one-third of the Commissioners were prominent practisers of the art. On the same principle the constitution of this Commission is open to the observation that it included two notorious advocates of vivisection, Dr. Erichsen and Professor Huxley, both of whom had to ‘explain’ their writings and practices in connection with it, in the course of the inquiry.”
Certain it is, as I heard at the time, and as anyone may verify by looking over the Minutes of Evidence, these two able gentlemen acted, not as Judges on the Bench examining evidence dispassionately, but as exceedingly vigorous and keen-eyed Counsel for the Physiologists. On the humanitarian side there was but a single pronounced opponent of Vivisection,—Mr. R. H. Hutton,—who nobly sacrificed his time for half a year to doing all that was in the power of a single Member of the Commission, and he a layman, to elicit the truth concerning the alleged cruelty of the practice. At the end, after receiving a mass of evidence in answer to 3,764 questions from 53 witnesses, the Commission reported distinctly in favour of legislative interference. They say:—
“Even if the weight of authority on the side of legislative interference had been less considerable, we should have thought ourselves called upon to recommend it by the reason of the thing. It is manifest that the practice is, from its very nature, liable to great abuse, and that since it is impossible for society to entertain the idea of putting an end to it, it ought to be subjected to due regulation and control.... It is not to be doubted that inhumanity may be found in persons of very high position as physiologists.... Beside the cases in which inhumanity exists, we are satisfied that there are others in which carelessness and indifference prevail to an extent sufficient to form a ground for legislative interference.”
Yet in the face of these and other weighty sentences to the same purpose, it has been persistently asserted that the Royal Commission exonerated English physiologists from all charge of cruelty! In Mr. Darwin’s celebrated letter to Professor Holmgren, of Upsala, published in the Times, April, 1881, he said: “The investigation of the matter by a Royal Commission proved that the accusations made against our English physiologists were false.” Commenting on this letter the Spectator, April 23rd, 1881 (doubtless Mr. Hutton himself) observed:
“The Royal Commission did not report this. They came to no such conclusion, and though that may be Mr. Darwin’s own inference from what they did say, it is only his inference, not theirs. In our opinion it was proved that very great cruelty had been practised, with hardly any appreciable results, by more than one British physiologist.”
Nor must it be left out of sight in estimating the disingenuousness of the advocates of vivisection, that the above quoted sentences from the Report of the Commission were countersigned by those representatives of Science, Prof. Huxley and Mr. Erichsen; as were, of course, also the subsequent paragraphs, formally recommending a measure almost identical with Lord Carnarvon’s Bill. In spite of this the Vivisecting clique has not ceased to assert that English physiologists were exculpated, and to protest against the measure which we introduced in strict accordance with that recommendation; a measure which was even still further mitigated, (as regarded freedom to the vivisectors,) under the pressure of their Deputation to the Home Office, till it became the present quasi ineffectual Act.
While the Royal Commission was still sitting in the autumn, and when it had become obvious that much would remain to be done before any effectual check could be placed on Vivisection, Dr. Hoggan suggested to me that we should form a Society to carry on the work. I abhorred Societies, and knew only too well the huge additional labour of working the machinery of one, over and above any direct help to the object in view. I had hitherto worked independently and freely, taking always the advice of the eminent men who were so good as to counsel me at every step. But I felt that this plan could not suffice much longer, and that the authority of a formally constituted Society was needed to make headway against an evil which daily revealed itself as more formidable. Accordingly I agreed with Dr. Hoggan that we should do well to form such a Society, he and I being the Honorary Secretaries, provided we could obtain the countenance of some men of eminence to form the nucleus. “I will write,” I said, “to Lord Shaftesbury and to the Archbishop of York. If they will give me their names, we can conjure with them. If not, I will not undertake to form a Society.”