The Home Secretary answered:
"It is the practice of the Home Office, in addition to the fact that all certificates expire on December 31st of the year in which they are granted, to limit the number, and this is always done in the case of serious experiments in which the use of anæsthetics is wholly or partly dispensed with."
The Times says that the Home Secretary said "serious experiments." Mr. Coleridge says that Hansard says that the Home Secretary said "serious operations." We need not doubt that Mr. Coleridge is right; but we may doubt whether Hansard underlines the word wholly, as Mr. Coleridge does. Anyhow, it does not matter now whether the Home Secretary, seven years ago, said experiments or operations. His meaning is clear enough; that, in all serious procedures, whether they be under Certificate A or under Certificate B, a limit is put to the number of experiments. Which is the plain truth, as everybody knows who is concerned in the administration of the Act; and the limit may be very strict indeed. After this statement by the Home Secretary in 1899, we still find Dr. Abiathar Wall, the Hon. Treasurer of the London Anti-vivisection Society, saying in 1900 that a vivisector has only to say that he has a theory whereby he hopes to discover a cure for, say, neuralgia of the little finger, and the Home Secretary promptly arms him with a license to torture as diabolically as he pleases and as many animals as he deems fit. And the National Society has made constant use of this phrase about "serious experiments"; declaring that the Home Secretary himself has said that animals are tortured under the Act. Here are three statements to that effect, made by the National Society's Parliamentary Secretary, by its Lecturer, and by its Hon. Secretary:—
1. (Annual Meeting, Queen's Hall, May 1900.)—"If you are still unconvinced—if any one is not thoroughly satisfied that there is ample cause for the anti-vivisectionist movement to-day—it is only necessary for me to refer you to the words of the Home Secretary, as spoken in Parliament, in the year 1898.[49] He said: 'There are serious operations which are performed, during which the use of anæsthetics is wholly or partially dispensed with.' Could there be any more sweeping indictment than that? Is there any need for me to attempt to convince you that the lower animals are vivisected painfully, after the words officially spoken by the Home Secretary in the House of Commons?"
2. "If you want any further proof I will quote from Hansard, July 24th, 1899, when the then Home Secretary stated in the House of Commons that serious experiments take place under the law of England, in which the use of anæsthetics is wholly or partially dispensed with. Now, I affirm that serious experiments in which anæsthetics are wholly or partially dispensed with mean torture pure and simple."
3. (Annual Meeting, St. James's Hall, May 1901.)—"If this were not enough, the late Home Secretary has told us the facts. I have Hansard here. On July 24th, 1899, the late Home Secretary in his place in Parliament, and in his official capacity as Home Secretary, told us that 'serious experiments, in which the use of anæsthetics have been wholly or partially dispensed with,' do take place in English laboratories. We know, therefore, that torture does take place."
Each of the three speakers uses this phrase as a final and irresistible argument. If you are still unconvinced. If you want any further proof. If this were not enough—they all of them play the Home Secretary, as a sure card: at Queen's Hall, at St. James's Hall, they produce him as though it were indeed unanswerable. Since they are willing to go back to July, let us take them back to May. This phrase about "serious experiments" was spoken on July 24th, 1899. On May 9th of that year, a question was put and answered in the House. It was put by the same gentleman who put the question in July; it was answered by the same Home Secretary; and it was practically the same question. The Home Secretary, in his answer to it, said:—
"The sole use of this Certificate (B) is to authorise the keeping alive of the animal, after the influence of the anæsthetic has passed off, for the purpose of observation and study. I should certainly not allow any certificate involving dissections or painful operations without the fresh use of anæsthetics."
Here, in May 1899, we have this emphatic statement, that Certificate B is not allowed for "serious operations without anæsthetics." Why did the National Society stop at July? If it had only gone a few weeks further back, a surprise was in store for it. But at July it stuck; thus it was still able to say all sorts of things about "legalised torture." So late as May 6th, 1902, at the great annual meeting at St. James's Hall, the Rev. Reginald Talbot said:—
"Certificate B makes it necessary that the operator should produce complete anæsthesia during the initial operation, but (please mark this) after the initial operation is over, after the animal has returned to the state of semi or complete consciousness, there is then allowed by this certificate a period of observation upon a semi-sensible or completely sensible animal. The animal is opened, is disembowelled, and in that condition his vital organs can be probed and stimulated. Now that is something more than pain; it deserves something more than the name of even severe and prolonged pain. Surely this comes within the tract and region of what we may call agony."