[210] General Advertiser, March 4th, 1784. Since Ritson quoted this from the newspaper of his day, 80 years ago, the same scenes of equal and possibly of still greater barbarity have been recorded in our newspapers, season after season, of the royal and other hunts, with disgusting monotony of detail. Voltaire’s remarks upon this head are worthy of quotation: “It has been asserted that Charles IX. was the author of a book upon hunting. It is very likely that if this prince had cultivated less the art of torturing and killing other animals, and had not acquired in the forests the habit of seeing blood run, there would have been more difficulty in getting from him the order of St. Bartholomew. The chase is one of the most sure means for blunting in men the sentiment of pity for their own species; an effect so much the more fatal, as those who are addicted to it, placed in a more elevated rank, have more need of this bridle.”—Œuvres LXXII., 213. In Flaubert’s remarkable story of La Légende de St. Julien the hero “developes by degrees a propensity to bloodshed. He kills the mice in the chapel, the pigeons in the garden, and soon his advancing years gave him opportunity of indulging this taste in hunting. He spends whole days in the chase, caring less for the ‘sport’ than for the slaughter.” One day he shoots a Fawn, and while the despairing mother, “looking up to heaven, cried with a loud voice, agonising and human,” St. Julien remorselessly kills her also. Then the male parent, a noble-looking Stag, is shot last of all; but, advancing, nevertheless, he comes up to the terrified murderer, and “stopped suddenly, and with flaming eyes and solemn tone, as of a just judge, he spoke three times, while a bell tolled in the distance, ‘Accursed one! ruthless of heart! thou shalt slay thy father and mother also,’ and tottering and closing his eyes he expired.” The blood-stained man on one occasion is followed closely by all the victims of his wanton cruelty, who press around him with avenging looks and cries. He fulfils the prophecy of the Stag, and murders his parents.—See Fortnightly Review, April, 1878.
[211] It is scarcely necessary to remind our readers that a quarter of a century later (1827), when Martin had the courage to introduce the first bill for the prevention of cruelty to certain of the domesticated animals (a very partial measure after all), the humane attempt was greeted by an almost universal shout of ridicule and derision, both in and out of the Legislature.
[212] See Appendix.
[213] Quoted from an article in the Gentleman’s Magazine, (August, 1787), signed Etonensīs, who, amongst other particulars, states of the hero of his sketch that he was “one of the most original geniuses who have ever existed.... He was well skilled in natural philosophy, and might be said to have been a moral philosopher, not in theory only, but in strict and uniform practice. He was remarkably humane and charitable; and, though poor, was a bold and avowed enemy to every species of oppression.... Certain it is, that he accounted the murder (as he called it) of the meanest animal, except in self defence, a very criminal breach of the laws of nature; insisting that the creator of all things had constituted man not the tyrant, but the lawful and limited sovereign, of the inferior animals, who, he contended, answered the ends of their being better than their little despotic lord.... He did not think it
‘Enough
In this late age, advent’rous to have touched
Light on the precepts of the Samian Sage,’
for he acted in strict conformity with them.... His vegetable and milk diet afforded him, in particular, very sufficient nourishment; for when I last saw him, he was still a tall, robust, and rather corpulent man, though upwards of fourscore.” He was reported it seems, to be a believer in the Metempsychosis. “It was probably so said,” remarks Ritson, “by ignorant people who cannot distinguish justice or humanity from an absurd and impossible system. The compiler of the present book, like Pythagoras and John Williamson, abstains from flesh-food, but he does not believe in the Metempsychosis, and much doubts whether it was the real belief of either of those philosophers.”—Abstinence from Animal Food a Moral Duty, by Joseph Ritson. R. Phillips, London, 1802.
[214] In a sketch of the life of George Nicholson, contributed to a Manchester journal, by Mr. W. E. A. Axon.
[215] Perhaps the fallacy of this line of apology, on the part of the ordinary dietists, cannot be better illustrated than by the example of the man-eating tribes of New Zealand, Central Africa, and other parts of the world, who confessedly are (or were) hominivorous, and who have been by travellers quoted as some of the finest races of men on the globe. The “wholesome nutriment” of their human food was as forcible an argument for their stomach as the “agreeable flavour” was attractive for their palates. Such glaring fallacy might be illustrated further by the example of the man-eating tiger who, we may justly imagine, would use similar apologies for his practice.