A writer has thus graphically described the scene in a cattle-boat in rough weather: 'Helpless cattle dashed from one side of the ship to the other, amid a ruin of smashed pens, with limbs broken from contact with hatchway combings or winches—dishorned, gored, and some of them smashed to mere bleeding masses of hide-covered flesh. Add to this the shrieking of the tempest, and the frenzied moanings of the wounded beasts, and the reader will have some faint idea of the fearful scenes of danger and carnage ... the dead beasts, advanced, perhaps, in decomposition before death ended their sufferings, are often removed literally in pieces.'
And on the railway journey, though perhaps the animals do not experience so much physical pain as travelling by sea, yet they are often deprived of food, and water, and rest, for long periods, and mercilessly knocked about and bruised. They are often so injured that the cattle-men are surprised they have not succumbed to their injuries. And all this happens in order that the demand for unnecessary flesh-food may be satisfied.
Those who defend flesh-eating often talk of humane methods of slaughtering; but it is significant that there is considerable difference of opinion as to what is the most humane method. In England the pole-axe is used; in Germany the mallet; the Jews cut the throat; the Italians stab. It is obvious that each of these methods cannot be better than the others, yet the advocates of each method consider the others cruel. As Lieut. Powell remarks, this 'goes far to show that a great deal of cruelty and suffering is inseparable from all methods.'
It is hard to imagine how anyone believing he could live healthily on vegetable food alone, could, having once considered these things, continue a meat-eater. At least to do so he could not live his life in conformity with the precept that we should cause no unnecessary pain.
How unholy a custom, how easy a way to murder he makes for himself
Who cuts the innocent throat of the calf, and hears unmoved its mournful plaint!
And slaughters the little kid, whose cry is like the cry of a child,
Or devours the birds of the air which his own hands have fed!
Ah, how little is wanting to fill the cup of his wickedness!
What unrighteous deed is he not ready to commit.
Make war on noxious creatures, and kill them only,
But let your mouths be empty of blood, and satisfied with pure and natural repasts.
Ovid. Metam., lib. xv.
That we cannot find any justification for destroying animal life for food does not imply we should never destroy animal life. Such a cult would be pure fanaticism. If we are to consider physical well-being as of primary importance, it follows that we shall act in self-preservation 'making war on noxious creatures.' But this again is no justification for 'blood-sports.'
He who inflicts pain needlessly, whether by his own hand or by that of an accomplice, not only injures his victim, but injures himself. He stifles what nobleness of character he may have and he cultivates depravity and barbarism. He destroys in himself the spirit of true religion and isolates himself from those whose lives are made beautiful by sympathy. No one need hope for a spiritual Heaven while helping to make the earth a bloody Hell. No one who asks others to do wrong for him need imagine he escapes the punishment meted out to wrong-doers. That he procures the service of one whose sensibilities are less keen than his own to procure flesh-food for him that he may gratify his depraved taste and love of conformity does not make him less guilty of crime. Were he to kill with his own hand, and himself dress and prepare the obscene food, the evil would be less, for then he would not be an accomplice in retarding the spiritual growth of a fellow being. There is no shame in any necessary labour, but that which is unnecessary is unmoral, and slaughtering animals to eat their flesh is not only unnecessary and unmoral; it is also cruel and immoral. Philosophers and transcendentalists who believe in the Buddhist law of Kârma, Westernized by Emerson and Carlyle into the great doctrine of Compensation, realize that every act of unkindness, every deed that is contrary to the dictates of our nobler instincts and reason, reacts upon us, and we shall truly reap that which we have sown. An act of brutality brutalizes, and the more we become brutalized the more we attract natures similarly brutal and get treated by them brutally. Thus does Nature sternly deal justice.