A pathetic picture, indeed! It does not for a moment occur to this sapient prophet of disaster that the adoption of vegetarianism will necessarily be gradual, and further that vegetarians do not hold the life of animals to be "as sacred as human life." To critics who do not even ascertain what the system means before they reject it, and who ignore all consideration of the degrees and relative sacredness of the various forms of life, vegetarianism must naturally seem to be a confused jumble of thought—the confusion, in reality, being altogether on their own side.
Alarmist: There is another aspect of this question, and a very grave one. If flesh-eating were abolished, what would become of the animals?
Vegetarian: Yes, let us talk about that fearful contingency. You think they would be thrown out of employment, so to speak—would find their careers cut short, or rather left long?
Alarmist: It is no joking matter. Would they not run wild in ever-increasing numbers, and perhaps overrun the land, or, if food failed them, lie dead and dying about our roadways and suburbs?
Vegetarian: Before I relieve your anxiety on this point, may I just remark that this second difficulty seems to counterbalance the former one? If every suburban householder is likely to have a dead ox against his garden-gate, we evidently need not fear the failure of the leather and tallow trade. But once again you are mistaken. You have overlooked the fact that the breeding of animals is not free and unrestricted, but is kept within certain limits, and carefully regulated by man; so that if the demand for butchers' meat should gradually decline, there would be no more alarming result than a corresponding gradual decline in the supply from the breeder.
Alarmist: Well, I don't know. I sadly doubt whether things would balance themselves so comfortably.
Vegetarian: Ah, you think that some neglected old porker, like Scott's "Last Minstrel," would be left out in the cold.
"For, well-a-day! their date was fled,
His tuneful brethren all were dead;
And he, neglected and oppressed,