Longed to be with them and at rest."
But no; for look at the case of the donkey. We do not (knowingly) eat donkeys, yet a dead donkey is proverbially a rare sight. Nor are we overrun with donkeys—at least, not in the sense referred to.
Alarmist: Yet I understand that in India, where there is a reluctance to kill animals, they are often in wretched plight.
Vegetarian: True; but we were talking not of killing animals but of eating them. Vegetarianism is not Brahminism; we would kill when necessary, whether for our own sake or the animals', but we would not breed them in vast numbers in order to kill, nor kill them in order to eat. Surely the distinction is a clear one?
The attitude of vegetarians towards this subject is indeed plain enough for those who wish to understand it. Regarding the slaughter of animals for food as cruel and unnecessary, they advocate its discontinuance (a process which, if it comes about at all, will, as I have shown, be a gradual one, and will at no point cause any sudden disruption of existing conditions), but this does not commit them to the absurd belief that animal life, in all its various grades, is absolutely sacred and inviolable. Must we not suspect that the apologists of flesh-eating who make these childish alarums and excursions are fain to do so from some inner conviction of the weakness of their own case?
BIBLE AND BEEF
"Bible and Beer" is the title that is sometimes sarcastically applied to the political alliance between churchmen and publicans; and in like manner the dietetic alliance between the "unco' guid" and the butchers may be not inaptly designated as Bible and Beef. When all else fails, the authority of Holy Writ is triumphantly cited by the bibliolatrous flesh-eater as the great court of appeal to which the food question must be carried; and here at least, it is pleaded, there can be no doubt as to the verdict. "It seems to me," wrote Dr. William Paley, more than a hundred years ago, "that it would be difficult to defend this right [to the flesh of animals] by any arguments which the light and order of Nature afford, and that we are beholden for it to the permission recorded in Scripture."[[47]]
It is a far cry from the theologian of 1784 to the Meat Trades' Journal of to-day, but from an editorial article we learn that the organ of the butchering trade is animated by the same profound sense of piety. "The great Creator of all flesh," it says, "gave us the beasts of the field, not only for our food, but for other purposes equally as essential to us. The grass must be eaten by our flocks and herds, otherwise the fertility of the soil would vanish. It was a frightful punishment on the Egyptian [sic] King that he should be reduced to the level of the beasts of the field and eat grass."[[48]]
Now, waiving the fact that grass is not precisely the diet that vegetarians adopt, and that it is, therefore, no reproach to vegetarianism if Nebuchadnezzar, not being a ruminant, found such a regimen distasteful, we must recognise that there is a widespread idea among religious people that the lower animals were "sent" us as food, and that the practice of flesh-eating has the seal of biblical sanction. In meeting this prejudice, there is a right line and a wrong line of reasoning, both of which have at different times been followed by vegetarian speakers.