Runcorn Examiner. — 1893-01-07 (Runcorn, Cheshire, England)

MAKIN.  A LEGACY FROM BARBARISM. "They jest at scars who never felt the wound."  Sir,—The gravity and importance of the subject again emboldens me to trespass upon your space, in order to plead the cause of our "poor relations" the animals. To my mind, this cause commends itself more forcibly as being that of the weak and defenceless; the plaint of the victim against the persecutor ; the cry of the innocent unhappy for protection from the atrocious treatment of their "unnatural enemies." It is reserved to man, who has imagined a hell for such of his kind as differ from him in certain opinions, to have also the unenviab;e distinction of creating a real hell upon earth for certain of his fellow-beings who happen to be at once innocent of offence and defence. Does it not seem a cruel anomaly,that in this last decade of the 19th century—in the midst of our boasted advanced civilisation—atrocities should be perpetrated by legal license, which would have been revolting to the humanity of ruder ages ? We have come to see crimes most inhuman perpetrated upon animals, in the name, and ostensibly, for the benefit of humanity. Surely it is high time the vivisector should be cited before the bar of public opinion, to show cause why his malpractices be not interdicted? A practice which can show no moral right for its existence,and against which so much of moral wrong is imputed, should have no mercy from those who have the least tinge of righteousness and a fair sense of moral responsibility. I have asked, "Whence does the vivisector get his " right" ? The only answer, as yet, has been, "Its utility." I have shown where the utility plea would lead, if admitted ; in the murder of infected people for the benefit of the community ! The only " right" a vivisector has for his malpractices is the old, old, right, now so deservedly in disrepute, the right of might. He has the "power" to do it, and having lost, or never having had, the sense of the moral iniquity he is perpetrating,uses that power,which you and I, reader,have given him, remorselessly to embitter the latter end of the living " materials of investigation." Surely, the more advanced and reasoned morality of our age will not recognise this legacy from barbarism as a right? The more I reflect upon this most painful subject the more the conviction is borne in upon me that we, the electors of England, are they upon whose shoulders the responsibility rests for the continuance of these atrocities. As to the vivisectors themselves, they are so " interred " in their study as to have lost sight of its moral iniquity. The man who is digging the well sees only the inside of his subject, and is perhaps a good authority on matters pertaining to the interior of the well but outsiders are perhaps better qualified to form a judgment on the general bearing of the work with other objects. I have come to regard the practisers of the living dissection of animals as the victims of a mild form of monomania,who have lost their sense of moral responsibility in this matter. Just as Calvin, in the matter of Servetus, and the auto-da-fis-ists generally, while being men actuated by what we may consider the highest motives, were yet, when weighed against our higher standard of morality, the perpetrators and instigators of )alost horrible crimes. We do not now think a difference of opinion ought to subject a man to death in its most terrible form. But the morally less advanced opinion of the 18th:century condoned the evil of the means for the sake of the assumed good of the end. Now we, clearer sighted, do not think the end justified the means; and should undoubtedly use more than moral suasion to prevent a repetition of Calvin's crime. As we now regard the Calvin-Servetus episode, as will posterity regard vivisection and our attitude towards it ; it will undoubtedly hold us responsible if we do we not put the restraints of civilization upon a practice that disgraces that civilization. It is charitable to suppose Calvin and the Inquisitors to have been monomaniacal on their subjects ; equally so with the vivisectors. They are the victims of their convictions; and we know that the home of the strongest—if most unfounded—convictions is in asylums, for the reception and retention of the victims of over-strong convictions. How can anyone aver that " His tender mercies are over all His works " while such iniquities occur ?—Yours, &c.,