Atque imploranti similis.”[302]

“But if our ‘Sports’ are destructive, our Gluttony is more so, and in a more inhuman manner. Lobsters roasted alive, Pigs whipt to death, Fowls sewed up,[303] are testimonies of our outrageous Luxury. Those who (as Seneca expresses it) divide their lives betwixt an anxious Conscience and a Nauseated Stomach, have a just reward of their gluttony in the diseases it brings with it. For human savages, like other wild beasts, find snares and poison in the provisions of life, and are allured by their appetite to their destruction. I know nothing more shocking or horrid than the prospect of one of their kitchens covered with blood, and filled with the cries of Beings expiring in tortures. It gives one an image of a giant’s den in a romance, bestrewed with the scattered heads and mangled limbs of those who were slain by his cruelty.

“The excellent Plutarch (who has more strokes of good nature in his writings than I remember in any author) cites a saying of Cato to this effect:—That ’tis no easy task to preach to the Belly which has no ears. Yet if (says he) we are ashamed to be so out of fashion as not to offend, let us at least offend with some discretion and measure. If we kill an animal for our provision, let us do it with the meltings of compassion, and without tormenting it. Let us consider that it is, in its own nature, cruelty to put a living being to death—we, at least destroy a soul that has sense and perception.[304]

“History tells us of a wise and polite nation that rejected a person of the first quality, who stood for a justiciary office, only because he had been observed, in his youth, to take pleasure in teasing and murdering of Birds. And of another that expelled a man out of the Senate for dashing a bird against the ground who had taken refuge in his bosom. Every one knows how remarkable the Turks are for their Humanity in this kind. I remember an Arabian author, who has written a Treatise to show how far a man, supposed to have subsisted in a desert island, without any instruction, or so much as the sight of any other man, may, by the pure light of Nature, attain the knowledge of Philosophy and Virtue. One of the first things he makes him observe is the benevolence of Nature, in the protection and preservation of her creatures.[305] In imitation of which, the first act of virtue he thinks his self-taught philosopher would, of course, fall into, is to relieve and assist all the animals about them in their wants and distresses....

“Perhaps that voice or cry, so nearly resembling the human, with which Nature has endowed so many different animals, might purposely be given them to move our Pity, and prevent those cruelties we are to apt to inflict upon our Fellow Creatures.”

Pope quotes, in part, the admirable verses of Ovid, Metam. XV., with Dryden’s translation—and an apposite fable of the Persian Pilpai, which illustrates the base ingratitude of men who torture and slaughter their fellow labourers.—“I know it” (this common ingratitude) said the Cow, “by woful experience; for I have served a man this long time with milk, butter, and cheese, and brought him, besides, a Calf every year—but now I am old, he turns me into this pasture with design to sell me to a butcher, who, shortly, will make an end of me.”—The Guardian, LXI, May 21, 1713.

With Pilpai or Bidpai’s fable, compare that of La Fontaine on the same subject—L’Homme et la Couleuvre.

XI.
CHESTERFIELD. 1694–1773.

TO the expression of the opinion or feeling of Lord Chesterfield on butchering, given, in its place, in the body of this work (page 140), is here subjoined the remainder of his paper in The World. The value of such testimony may be deemed proportionate to the extreme rarity of any protests of this sort from those who, by their influential position, are the most bound to make them:—

“Although this reflection [the fact of the preying of the stronger upon the weaker throughout Nature] had force enough to dispythagorise me before my companions [in his college at the University of Oxford] had time to make observations upon my behaviour, which could by no means have turned to my advantage in the world, I for a great while retained so tender a regard for all my fellow-creatures, that I have several times brought myself into imminent peril by putting butcher-boys in mind, that their Sheep were going to die, and that they walked full as fast as could reasonably be expected, without the cruel blows they were so liberal in bestowing upon them. As I commonly came off the worst in these disputes, and as I could not but observe that I often aggravated, never diminished, the ill-treatment of these innocent sufferers, I soon found it necessary to consult my own ease, as well as security, by turning down another street, whenever I met with an adventure of this kind, rather than be compelled to be a spectator of what would shock me, or be provoked to run myself into danger, without the least advantage to those whom I would assist.