Sentence:  Indeed we should say , on the contrary , that the accident of our later discovery made no difference whatever to the badness of the animal 's pain , that it would have <WSD>been</WSD> every whit as bad whether a chance passer-by happened later to discover the body and feel repugnance or not . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)