“On Wednesday afternoon last, Dr. Lyon Playfair laid on the table of the House of Commons a Bill for the Restriction of Vivisection, which has been drawn up by physiologists, no doubt in part, in the interest of physiological science, but also in part, no doubt in the interest of humanity. The contents of this Bill are the best answer which it is possible to give to the ignorant attack made in a daily contemporary on Tuesday on Lord Henniker’s Bill, introduced into the House of Lords last week. The two Bills differ in principle only on one important point. Both of them clearly have been maturely considered by men of science as well as by humanitarians. Both of them assume the great and increasing character of the evil which has to be dealt with. Both of them approach that evil in the same manner, by insisting that scientific experiments which are painful to animals shall be tried only on the avowed responsibility of men of the highest education, whose right to try them may be withdrawn if it be abused. Both of them aim at compelling the physiologists who are permitted to try such experiments at all, to use anæsthetics throughout the experiment, whenever the use of anæsthetics is not fatal to the investigation itself.... The Bills differ, however, on a most important point. It is certain that all the contempt showered on Lord Henniker’s Bill by the ignorant assailants of the humanitarian party might equally have been showered on Dr. Lyon Playfair’s. But Lord Henniker’s Bill contemplates making physiological and pathological experiments on living animals, even under complete anæsthesia, illegal, except under the same responsibility and on the same conditions as those experiments which are not, and cannot be, conducted under complete anæsthesia,—while Dr. Lyon Playfair leaves all experiments conducted under anæsthetics,—and will practically, though not theoretically, leave, we fear, those which only PROFESS to be so conducted (a very different thing),—as utterly without restriction as they now are. Indeed, it attempts no sort of limitation upon them. If a whole hecatomb of guinea-pigs, or even dogs, were known to be imported, and their carcases exported daily from the private house of any man who declared that he always used anæsthetics, Dr. Playfair’s Bill provides, we believe, no sort of machinery by which the truth of his assertion could be even tested.... It is, however, no small matter to have obtained this clear admission on scientific authority that the victimisation of animals in the interest of science is an evil of a growing and serious kind which needs legislative interference, and calls for at least the threat of serious penalties....”

In short, the Bill promoted by the physiologists and Mr. Darwin, was, like the Resolutions of the Liverpool British Association, a “Pious Opinion” or Brutum fulmen. Nothing more.

The Royal Commission on Vivisection was issued, as I have said, on the 22nd June, 1875, and the Report was dated January 8th, 1876. The intervening months were filled with anxiety. I heard constantly all that went on at the Commission, and my hopes and fears rose and fell week by week. Of the constitution of the Commission much might be said. Writing of it in the British Friend, May, 1876, the late Mr. J. B. Firth, M.P., Q.C., remarked:—

“If it were possible for a Royal Commission to be appointed to inquire into the practice of Thuggee, I should have very little confidence in their report if one-third of the Commissioners were prominent practisers of the art. On the same principle the constitution of this Commission is open to the observation that it included two notorious advocates of vivisection, Dr. Erichsen and Professor Huxley, both of whom had to ‘explain’ their writings and practices in connection with it, in the course of the inquiry.”

Certain it is, as I heard at the time, and as anyone may verify by looking over the Minutes of Evidence, these two able gentlemen acted, not as Judges on the Bench examining evidence dispassionately, but as exceedingly vigorous and keen-eyed Counsel for the Physiologists. On the humanitarian side there was but a single pronounced opponent of Vivisection,—Mr. R. H. Hutton,—who nobly sacrificed his time for half a year to doing all that was in the power of a single Member of the Commission, and he a layman, to elicit the truth concerning the alleged cruelty of the practice. At the end, after receiving a mass of evidence in answer to 3,764 questions from 53 witnesses, the Commission reported distinctly in favour of legislative interference. They say:—

“Even if the weight of authority on the side of legislative interference had been less considerable, we should have thought ourselves called upon to recommend it by the reason of the thing. It is manifest that the practice is, from its very nature, liable to great abuse, and that since it is impossible for society to entertain the idea of putting an end to it, it ought to be subjected to due regulation and control.... It is not to be doubted that inhumanity may be found in persons of very high position as physiologists.... Beside the cases in which inhumanity exists, we are satisfied that there are others in which carelessness and indifference prevail to an extent sufficient to form a ground for legislative interference.”

Yet in the face of these and other weighty sentences to the same purpose, it has been persistently asserted that the Royal Commission exonerated English physiologists from all charge of cruelty! In Mr. Darwin’s celebrated letter to Professor Holmgren, of Upsala, published in the Times, April, 1881, he said: “The investigation of the matter by a Royal Commission proved that the accusations made against our English physiologists were false.” Commenting on this letter the Spectator, April 23rd, 1881 (doubtless Mr. Hutton himself) observed:

“The Royal Commission did not report this. They came to no such conclusion, and though that may be Mr. Darwin’s own inference from what they did say, it is only his inference, not theirs. In our opinion it was proved that very great cruelty had been practised, with hardly any appreciable results, by more than one British physiologist.”

Nor must it be left out of sight in estimating the disingenuousness of the advocates of vivisection, that the above quoted sentences from the Report of the Commission were countersigned by those representatives of Science, Prof. Huxley and Mr. Erichsen; as were, of course, also the subsequent paragraphs, formally recommending a measure almost identical with Lord Carnarvon’s Bill. In spite of this the Vivisecting clique has not ceased to assert that English physiologists were exculpated, and to protest against the measure which we introduced in strict accordance with that recommendation; a measure which was even still further mitigated, (as regarded freedom to the vivisectors,) under the pressure of their Deputation to the Home Office, till it became the present quasi ineffectual Act.

While the Royal Commission was still sitting in the autumn, and when it had become obvious that much would remain to be done before any effectual check could be placed on Vivisection, Dr. Hoggan suggested to me that we should form a Society to carry on the work. I abhorred Societies, and knew only too well the huge additional labour of working the machinery of one, over and above any direct help to the object in view. I had hitherto worked independently and freely, taking always the advice of the eminent men who were so good as to counsel me at every step. But I felt that this plan could not suffice much longer, and that the authority of a formally constituted Society was needed to make headway against an evil which daily revealed itself as more formidable. Accordingly I agreed with Dr. Hoggan that we should do well to form such a Society, he and I being the Honorary Secretaries, provided we could obtain the countenance of some men of eminence to form the nucleus. “I will write,” I said, “to Lord Shaftesbury and to the Archbishop of York. If they will give me their names, we can conjure with them. If not, I will not undertake to form a Society.”

I wrote that night to those two eminent persons. I received next day from Lord Shaftesbury a telegram (which he must have dispatched instantly on receiving my letter) which answered “Yes.” Next day the post brought from him the letter which I shall here print. The next post brought also the letter from Archbishop Thomson. Thus the Society consisted for two days of Lord Shaftesbury, the Archbishop, Dr. Hoggan and myself!

“Lord Shaftesbury to Miss F. P. C.

“It is needful I am sure, to found a Society, in order to have unity and persistency of action.

“I judge, by the terms of the circular, that the object of the Society will be restriction and not prohibition.

“Possibly, this end is as much as you will be able to attain. Prohibition, I doubt not, would be evaded; but restriction will, I am certain, be exceeded.

“Not but that a little is better than nothing.

“But you will find many who will think with much show of reason, that, by surrendering the principle, you have surrendered the great argument.

“I am quite ready to join the Society for restricting Vivisection. I agree with you; total prohibition would be impossible.

With these names to “conjure with,” as I have said, we found it easy to enrol a goodly company in the ranks of our new Society. Cardinal Manning was one of the first to join us. On the 2nd Dec., 1875, the first Committee meeting was held in the house of Dr. and Mrs. Hoggan, 13, Granville Place, Portman Square, Mr. Stansfeld taking the chair. Mrs. Wedgwood, wife of Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood and mother of my friend Miss Julia Wedgwood, was present at that first meeting, and (so long as her health permitted,) at those which followed,—a worthy example of “heredity,” since her father and mother, Sir James and Lady Mackintosh, had been among the principal supporters of Richard Martin, and founders of the R.S.P.C.A. At the third meeting of the Committee, on Feb. 18th, 1876, Lord Shaftesbury took the Chair, for the first time, and again he took it on the occasion of a memorable meeting on the 1st of March, but vacated it on the arrival of Archbishop Thomson, who proved to be an admirably efficient Chairman. We had a serious job, that day; that of discussing the “Statement” of our position and objects. I had drafted this Statement in preparation, as well as compiled from the Minutes of Evidence, a series of Extracts exhibiting the extension and abuses of Vivisection; and also evidence regarding Anæsthetics and regarding foreign physiologists. These appendices were all accepted and appear in the pamphlet; but my Statement was most minutely debated, clause for clause, and at last adopted, not without several modifications. After summarising the Report of the Royal Commission which “has been in some respects seriously misconstrued” (I might add, persistently misconstrued ever since) and also Mr. Hutton’s independent Report, in which he desired that the “Household Animals” should be exempted from Vivisection, the Committee carefully criticise this Report and express their confident hope that “a Bill may be introduced immediately by Government to carry out the recommendations of the Commission.” They observe, in conclusion, that they find “a just summary of their sentiments in Mr. Hutton’s expression of his view:—

“‘The measure will not at all satisfy my own conceptions of the needs of the case, unless it result in putting an end to all experiments involving not merely torture but anything at all approaching thereto.’”

Such was our attitude at that memorable date when we commenced the regular steady work which has now gone on for just 18 years. On the 2nd or 3rd of March I took possession of the offices where so large a part of my life was henceforth to be spent. When my kind colleagues had left me and I locked the outer door of the offices and knew myself to be alone, I resolved very seriously to devote myself, so long as might be needful, to this work of trying to save God’s poor creatures from their intolerable doom; and I resolved “never to go to bed at night leaving a stone unturned which might help to stop Vivisection.” I believe I have kept that resolution. I commend it to other workers.

It may interest the reader to know who were the persons then actually aiding and supporting our movement.

There was,—first and most important,—my colleague and friend Dr. George Hoggan, who laboured incessantly (and wholly gratuitously) for the cause. His wife, Dr. Frances Hoggan, who I am thankful to say, still survives, was also a most useful member of the Committee.

The other Members of the Executive were: Sir Frederick Elliot, K.C.M.G. who had long been Permanent Secretary at the Colonial Office; Major-General Colin Mackenzie, a noble old hero of the Afghan wars and the Mutiny; Mr. Leslie Stephen; Mrs. Hensleigh Wedgwood; Dr. Vaughan (the late Master of the Temple); the Countess of Portsmouth; the Countess of Camperdown; my friend Miss Lloyd; my cousin, Mr. Locke, M.P., Q.C.; Mr. William Shaen; Col. (now Sir Evelyn) Wood; and Mr. Edward de Fonblanque. The latter gentleman was one of the most useful members of the Committee, whose retirement three years later after our adoption of a more advanced policy, I have never ceased to regret.

Beside these Members of the Committee we had then as Vice-Presidents, the Archbishop of York, the Marquis of Bute, Cardinal Manning, Lord Portsmouth, Mr. Cowper-Temple (afterwards Lord Mount-Temple), Right Hon. James Stansfeld, Lord Shaftesbury, the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol (Dr. Ellicott), the Bishop of Manchester (Dr. Fraser), Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, and the Lord Chief Baron, Sir Fitzroy Kelly.

Dr. Hoggan had invited Mr. Spurgeon to join our Society, but received from him the following reply:—

“I do not like to become an officer of a Society for I have no time to attend to the duties of such an office, and it strikes me as a false system which is now so general, which allows names to appear on Committees and requires no service from the individuals.

“In all efforts to spare animals from needless pain I wish you the utmost success. There are cases in which they must suffer, as we also must, but not one pang ought to be endured by them from which we can screen them.

“I shall aid your effort in my own way.”

Mr. Spurgeon wrote on one occasion a letter to Lord Shaftesbury to be read from the Chair at a Meeting; but, much as we wished to use it, the extreme strength of the expletives was considered to transgress the borders of expediency!

We invited Prof. Rolleston to give us his support. The following was his reply:—

“I would have answered your letter before had I been able to make up my mind to do as you ask. This, however, I think I should not, in the interests of the line of legislation which I advocate, do well to do. I believe I speak with greater weight from keeping an independent position. And as I have a great desire to throw away none of the advantages which that position gives me, I am obliged to decline your invitation. Allow me to say that I am much gratified by your writing to ask me to do what I decline to do out of considerations of expediency.

“It is also a great pleasure to me to think that what I said at Bristol has met with your approbation. The bearing of parts at the end or towards the end of that Address upon the future of Vivisection was, I hope, tolerably obvious.

The newly-formed Society had been clumsily named by Dr. Hoggan: “The Society for Protection of Animals liable to Vivisection,” and its aim was: “to obtain the greatest possible protection for animals liable to vivisection.” I was obliged to yield to my colleague as regarded this awkward title which exactly defined the position he desired to take up; but it was a constant source of worry and loss to us. As soon as possible, however, after we had taken our offices in Victoria Street, I called our Society, unofficially and for popular use, simply “The Victoria Street Society.”

These offices are large and handsome, and so conveniently situated that the Society has retained them ever since. They are on the first floor of a house—formerly numbered “1,” now numbered “20,”—in Victoria Street, ten or eleven doors up the street from the Broad Sanctuary and the Westminster Palace Hotel; and with Westminster Abbey and the Towers of the Houses of Parliament in view from the street door. The offices contain an ante-room (now piled with our papers), a large airy room with two windows for the clerks, a Secretary’s private room, and a spacious and lightsome Committee-room with three windows. Out of this last another room was accessible, which at one time was taken for my especial use. I put up bookshelves, pictures, curtains, and various little feminine relaxations, and thus covered, as far as might be, the frightful character of our work, so that friends should find our office no painful place to visit.

We did not let the grass grow under our feet after we had settled down in these offices. On the 20th March there went out from them to the neighbouring Home Office a Deputation to Mr. (now Lord) Cross to urge the Government to bring in a Bill in accordance with the recommendations of the Royal Commission. The Deputation was headed by Lord Shaftesbury, and included the Earl of Minto, Cardinal Manning, Mr. Froude, Mr. Mundella, Sir Frederick Elliot, Col. Evelyn Wood, and Mr. Cowper-Temple. Mr. Carlyle was to have joined the Deputation, but held back sooner than accompany the Cardinal.

Chief Baron Kelly wrote us the following cordial expressions of regret for non-attendance:—

“The Lord Chief Baron presents his compliments to Miss Cobbe, and very greatly regrets that, being engaged at the assize on the Western Circuit until nearly the middle of April, he will be unable to accompany the deputation to Mr. Cross on the subject of Vivisection, to which, however, he earnestly wishes success.”

We had invited Canon Liddon, who was a subscriber to our funds from the first, to join this Deputation, but received from him the following reply:

“I should be sincerely glad to be able to obey your kind wishes in the matter of the proposed Deputation, if I could. But I am unable to be in London again between to-morrow and April 1st, and this, I fear will make it impossible.

“I shall be sincerely glad to hear that the Deputation succeeds in persuading the Home Secretary to make legislation on the Report of the Vivisection Commission a Government question. Mr. Hutton appeared to me to resist the —— criticisms of the Times on the Report very admirably!

A few weeks afterwards when I invited him to attend a meeting he wrote again a letter, to the last sentence of which I desire to call attention as embodying the opinion of this eminent man on the human moral interest involved in our crusade.

“I sincerely wish that I could obey your summons. But, as a professor here, I have public duties on Thursday, the 1st of June, which I cannot decline or transfer to other hands.

“I think I told you I was a useless person for these good purposes; and so, you see, it is.

“Still you are very well off in the way of speakers, and will not miss such a person as I. Heartily do I hope that the meeting may reward the trouble you have taken about it by strengthening Lord Carnarvon’s hands. The cause you have at heart is of even greater importance to human character than to the physical comfort of those of our ‘fellow creatures’ who are most immediately concerned.

The Deputation of March 20th to the Home Office was most favourably received, and our Society was invited to submit to Government suggestions respecting the provisions of the intended Bill. These suggestions were framed at a Committee held at our office on the 30th March, and they were adopted by Government after being approved by its official advisers, and presented by Lord Carnarvon in the House of Lords. The second reading took place on the 22nd May. On that occasion Lord Coleridge made a most judicious speech in defence of the Bill, and Lord Shaftesbury the long and beautiful one reprinted in our pamphlet, “In Memoriam.” The next morning all the newspapers came out with leading articles in praise of the Bill. It is hard now to realise that, previous to undergoing the medical pressure which has twisted the minds—(or at least the pens)—of three-fourths of the press, even the great paper which has been our relentless opponent for 17 years was then our cordial supporter. Everything at that time looked fair for us. The Bill, as we had drafted it, did, practically, fulfil Mr. Hutton’s aspiration. No experiment whatever under any circumstances was permitted on a dog, cat, horse, ass, or mule; nor any on any other animal except under conditions of complete anæsthesia from beginning to end. The Bill included Licenses, but no Certificates dispensing with the above provisions. Our hopes of carrying this bill seemed amply justified by the reception it received from the House of Lords and the Press; and from a great Conference of the R.S.P.C.A. and its branches, held on the 23rd May. We held our first General Meeting at Westminster Palace Hotel on the 1st June and resolutions in support of the Bill were passed enthusiastically; Lord Shaftesbury presiding, and the Marquis of Bute, Lord Glasgow, Cardinal Manning and others speaking with great spirit. It only needed, to all appearance, that the Bill should be pushed through its final stage in the Lords and sent down to the House of Commons, to secure its passage intact that same Session.

At this most critical moment, and through the whole month of June, Lord Carnarvon, in whose hands the Bill lay, was drawn away from London and occupied by the illness and death of Lady Carnarvon. No words can tell the anxiety and alarm this occasioned us, when we learned that a large section of the medical profession, which had so far seemed quiescent if not approving, had been roused by their chief wire-puller into a state of exasperation at the supposed “insult” of proposing to submit them to legal control in experimenting on living animals, (as they were already subjected to it, by the Anatomy Act, in dissecting dead bodies). These doctors, to the number of 3,000, signed a Memorial to the Home Secretary, calling on him to modify the Bill so as practically to reverse its character, and make it a measure, no longer protecting vivisected animals from torture, but vivisectors from prosecution under Martin’s Act. This Memorial was presented on the 10th July by a Deputation, variously estimated at 300 and at 800 doctors, who, in either case, were sufficiently numerous to overflow the purlieus of the Home Office and to overawe Mr. Cross. On the 10th of August the Bill—essentially altered in submission to the medical memorialists—was brought by Mr. Cross into the House of Commons, and was read a second time. On the 15th August, 1876, it received the Royal Assent and became the Act 39–40 Vict., c. 77, commonly called the “Vivisection Act.”

The world has never seemed to me quite the same since that dreadful time. My hopes had been raised so high to be dashed so low as even to make me fear that I had done harm instead of good, and brought fresh danger to the hapless brutes for whose sake, as I realised more and more their agonies, I would have gladly died. I was baffled in an aim nearer to my heart than any other had ever been, and for which I had strained every nerve for many months; and of all the hundreds of people who had seemed to sympathise and had signed our Memorials and petitions, there were none to say: “This shall not be!” Justice and Mercy seemed to have gone from the earth.

We left London,—the Session and the summer being over, and came as usual to Wales; but our enjoyment of the beauty of this lovely land had in great measure vanished. Even after twenty years my friend and I look back to our joyous summers before that miserable one, and say, “Ah! that was when we knew very little of Vivisection.”

In my despair I wrote several letters of bitter reproach to the friends in Parliament who had allowed our Bill to be so mutilated as that the British Medical Journal crowed over it, as affording full liberty to “science”; and I also wrote to several newspapers saying that after this failure to obtain a reasonable restrictive Bill, I, for one, should labour henceforth to obtain total prohibition. In reply to my letter (I fear a very petulant one) Lord Shaftesbury wrote me this full and important explanation which I commend to the careful reading of such of our friends as desire now to rescind the Act of 1876.

“Until we shall have seen the Act in print we cannot form a just estimate of the force of the amendments. Some few, so I see by the papers, were introduced in Committee, after my last interview with Mr. Cross; but of their character I know nothing. I am disposed, however, to believe that he would not have admitted anything of real importance.

“Mr. Cross’s difficulties were very great at all times; but they increased much as the Session was drawing to a close. The want of time, the extreme pressure of business, the active malignity of the Scientific men, and the indifference of his Colleagues, left the Secretary of State in a very weak and embarrassing position.

“Your letter, which I have just received, asks whether ‘the Bill cannot be turned out in the House of Lords?’ The reply is that, whether advisable or unadvisable, it cannot now be done, for the Parliament is prorogued.

“In the Bill as submitted to me, just before the second reading at a final interview with Mr. Cross, Mr. Holt and Lord Cardwell being present, some changes were made which I by no means approved. But the question, then, was simply, ‘The Bill as propounded, or no Bill,’ for Mr. Cross stoutly maintained that, without the alterations suggested, he had no hope of carrying anything at all. I reverted, therefore, to my first opinion, stated at the very commencement of my co-operation with your Committee, that it was of great importance, nay indispensable, to obtain a Bill, however imperfect, which should condemn the practice, put a limit on the exercise of it, and give us a foundation on which to build amendments hereafter as evidence and opportunity shall be offered to us.

“The Bill is of that character. I apprehended that if there were no Bill then, there would be none at any time. No private Member, I believe, and I still believe, could undertake such a measure with even a shadow of hope and there was more than doubt, whether a Secretary of State would, again, entangle himself with so bitter and so wearisome a question in the face of all Science, and the antipathies of most of his Colleagues. Public sympathy would have declined, and would not have easily been aroused a second time. The public sympathy at its best, was only noisy, and not effective; and this assertion is proved by the few signatures to petitions, compared with the professed feeling; and by the extreme difficulty to raise any funds in proportion to the exigency of the case.

“The evidence, too, given to the Commission, which was, after all, our main reliance, would have grown stale; and, the Physiologists would have taken good care that, for some time at least, nothing should transpire to take its place.

“We have gained an enactment that Experiments shall be performed by none but Licensed Persons, thereby excluding, should the Act be well enforced, the host of young students and their bed-chamber practices.

“We have gained an enactment that all experiments shall be performed under the influence of Anæsthetics;^[33] and, thirdly, the greatest enactment of all, that the Secretary of State is responsible for the due execution of all these provisions in Parliament, and in his Office, instead of the College of Physicians, or some such unreachable, and intangible Body, as many Secretaries of State, except Mr. Cross, would have evasively, appointed.

“This provision under the Statutes, so unexpected, and valuable, could have been suggested to Parliament by a Secretary of State only, and I feel sure that no Secretary of State in any ‘Liberal’ Administration would listen to the proposal; and I very much doubt whether Mr. Cross himself, had his present Bill been rejected, would have, in the case of a new Bill, repeated his offer of making it a measure for which the Cabinet has to answer.

“I have seen your letter to the Echo and the Daily News. You are quite justified in your determination to agitate the country on the subject of vivisection, and obtain, if it be possible, the total abolition of it. Such an issue may be within reach, and it is only by experience that we can ascertain how far such a blessed consummation is practicable. You will have a good deal of sympathy with your efforts, and from no one more than from myself.

When we all returned to town in October, the Committee placed on the Minutes a letter from me, saying that I could only retain the office of Honorary Secretary if the Society should adopt the principle of total prohibition. A circular was sent out calling for votes on the point, and by the 22nd November, 1876, the Resolution was carried, “That the Society would watch the existing Act with a view to the enforcement of its restrictions and its extension to the total prohibition of painful experiments on animals.”

In February, 1877, the Committee, to my satisfaction, unanimously agreed to support Mr. Holt’s Bill for total prohibition; and in aid thereof exhibited on the hoardings of London 1,700 handbills and 300 posters, which were enlarged reproductions of the illustrations of vivisection from the Physiological Hand-books. These posters certainly were more effective than as many thousands of speeches and pamphlets; and the indignation of the scientific party sufficiently proved that such was the case. On the 27th April we held our second annual meeting in support of Mr. Holt’s Bill, and had for speakers Lord Shaftesbury, the good Bishop of Winchester Dr. Harold-Browne, (now, alas! dead), Lord Mount-Temple, Prof. Sheldon Amos, Cardinal Manning, and Prince Lucien Bonaparte. The last remarkable man and erudite scholar (who most closely resembled his uncle in person, if we could imagine Napoleon I. commanding only armies of books!), was, from first to last, a warm friend of our cause. After this meeting we elected him Vice-President and here is his letter of acknowledgment:—

“I feel highly honoured at being nominated one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society for Protection of Animals liable to vivisection, and ask you to return the Committee my best thanks.

“I am a great admirer of a Society which, like yours, opposes so strongly the abominable practice of vivisection, because for my own part, I consider it, even in its mildest form, as a shame to Science, a dishonour to modern civilisation, and (what I think more important) a great offence against the law of God.

Here are some further letters concerned with that meeting or written to me soon afterwards:—

“I beg to thank you sincerely for your kind letter.

“So far as I can see there is, I fear, little chance of my being at liberty to take part in the proceedings on the 27th of April.

“However, with the names which you announce, you will be more than able to dispense with any assistance that I could lend to the common object. You will, I trust, be able to strengthen Mr. Holt’s hands. If what I have heard of his measure is at all accurate, it seems to be at once moderate and efficient.

“I was much struck by an observation which you were, I think, said to have made the other day at Bristol, to the effect that as matters now stand everything depends upon the discretion, or rather, upon the moral sympathies of the Home Secretary. Mr. Cross, I believe, would always do well in all such matters. But it does not do to reckon with the Roman Empire as if it were always to be governed by a Marcus Aurelius.

“I am sorry I cannot undertake to speak at your meeting on the 27th April. I am not sure that I shall be in London on that day, but request you to send me any notice of the meeting.

“My time and strength are somewhat overtaxed owing to an inability, and I may add indisposition, to say No when I think I may be useful. I am, however, I can assure you, in sympathy with you in your attempt to put down torture in every form.

“I will come in at some stage of your proceedings. I am bound first to Convocation—and am engaged at Kingston before 5.

“What I should like would be to thank Lord Shaftesbury; but this must depend on the time that I come, and that must depend on the exigencies of Convocation.

“I am very sorry that through absence from home my answer to your note has been delayed. I shall not be able to take part in your meeting on the 27th, for I am not in a state of health to take part in any public meeting; but if I am at all able I should like much to attend it and hear for myself the views of the speakers. I have not expressed publicly any opinion on the question of Vivisection, being anxious at first to await the determination of the Commission, and then to see how the restrictions were likely to work.

“I confess that my own mind is leaning very strongly to the conclusion that there is no safe, right course other than entire prohibition. The more I think of it the more I dread the brutality which in spite of the influence of the best men will inevitably be developed in our young Experimenters, in these days of almost fanatical devotion to scientific research. It seems to me to more than counterbalance the physical advantages to our sick what may grow out of the practice of vivisection.

“And I am very sceptical about these physical advantages. I doubt whether the secrets of nature can be successfully discovered by torture, any more than the secrets of hearts. We have abandoned the one endeavour, finding the results to be by no means worth the cost. I am persuaded that we shall soon, for the same reason, have to abandon the other.

“I am not able, as I say, to take part in a meeting, but as soon as I am able I intend to preach on the subject, and if you can forward to me any information which will be useful I shall be much obliged to you. Believe me

By this time there were two other Anti-vivisection Societies in London, beside Mr. Jesse’s Society at Macclesfield, all working for total prohibition; and though of course we had various small difficulties and rivalries in the course of time, yet practically we all helped each other and the cause. Eventually the International Society, of which Mr. and Mrs. Adlam were the spirited leaders, coalesced with ours and added to our Committee several of its most valuable members including our present much respected Chairman, Mr. Ernest Bell. The London Anti-vivisection Society, though I expended all my blandishments on it, has never consented to amalgamation, but has done a great work of its own for which we have all reason to hold it in honour.

The revolt against the cruelties of science spread also about this time to the continent. Baron Weber read his Torture Chamber of Science in Dresden, and created thereby a great sensation, followed by the formation of the German League, of which he is President, and the foundation of its organ, the Thier-und-Menschen-Freund, edited by Dr. Paul Förster, now a member of the Reichstag. Other Anti-vivisection Societies were founded then or in subsequent years in Hanover, in Berlin, and in Stockholm. In Copenhagen those devoted friends of animals, M. and Mdme. Lembcké, had long contended vigorously against the local vivisector, Panum. In Italy the Florence Società Protettrice, of which our Queen is Patroness and Countess Baldelli the indefatigable Hon. Sec., has steadily worked against vivisection from its foundation; and so has the Torinese Society of which Dr. Riboli is President and Countess Biandrate Morelli the leading member. In Riga there has also been a persevering movement against Vivisection by the excellent Society of which the Anwalt der Thiere is the (first-class) organ, and Madame V. Schilling the presiding spirit.

In short, by the end of the decade, though we had been so cruelly defeated, we were conscious that our movement had extended and had become to all appearance one of those permanent agitations, which, once begun, go on till the abuses which aroused them are abolished. In America the movement only took definite shape in February, 1883, when, under the auspices of the indefatigable Mrs. White, the American Anti-vivisection Society was founded at Philadelphia; to be followed up by its most flourishing Illinois Branch, carried on with immense spirit by Mrs. Fairchild Allen. Mr. Peabody and Mr. Greene have since established at Boston the New England Anti-vivisection Society, which has already become one of our most powerful allies.

On the 2nd May, Mr. Holt’s Bill for total prohibition was debated in the House of Commons, and on a division there were 83 votes in its favour and 222 against it.

At last the Committee of the Victoria Street Society formally adopted the thoroughgoing policy; and at a Meeting, August 7th, 1878, resolved “to appeal henceforth to public opinion in favour of the total prohibition of Vivisection.” We then changed our title to that of the Society for Protection of Animals from Vivisection. Dr. Hoggan and his wife, Mrs. Hoggan, M.D., and also Mr. de Fonblanque retired from the Committee with cordial goodwill on both sides, and the Archbishop of York withdrew from the Vice-Presidency. But, beside these losses, I do not believe that we had any others, and there was soon a large batch of fresh recruits of new Members who had long resented our previous half-hearted policy,—as they considered it to have been.

For my own part I had accepted from the outset the assurance I received on all hands that a Bill for the total prohibition of Vivisection had not the remotest chance of passing through Parliament in the present state of public opinion; but that a Bill might be framed, which, proceeding only on the grounds of Restriction, might effectually and thoroughly exclude “not only torture but anything at all approaching thereto”; and that such a Bill had every chance of becoming law. To promote such a Bill had been my single aim and hope, and when it had been prepared and presented and received so favourably, it really appeared as if we were on the right and reasonable tack; much as we hated any concession whatever to the demands of the vivisectors.

But when we found that the compromise which we proposed had failed, and that our Bill providing the minimum of protection for animals at all acceptable by their friends, was twisted into a Bill protecting their tormentors, we were driven to raise our demands to the total prohibition of the practice, and to determine to work upon that basis for any number of years till public opinion be ripe for our measure.

This was one aspect of our position; but there was another. We had in truth gone into this crusade almost as our forefathers had set off for the Holy Land, with scarcely any knowledge of the Power which we were invading. We knew that dreadful cruelties had been done; but we fondly imagined they were abuses which were separable from the practice of experimenting on living animals. We accepted blindly the representation of Vivisection by its advocates as a rare resource of baffled surgeons and physicians, intent on some discovery for the immediate benefit of humanity or the solution of some pressing and important physiological problem; and we thought that with due and well considered restrictions and safeguards on these occasional experiments, we might effectually shut out cruelty. By slow, very slow degrees, we learned that nothing was much further from the truth than these fancy pictures of ideal Vivisection, and that real Vivisection is not the occasional and regretfully-adopted resource of a few, but the daily employment (Carl Vogt called it his “daily bread”) of hundreds of men and students, devoted to it as completely and professionally as butchers to cutting up carcases. Finally we found that to extend protection by any conceivable Act of Parliament to animals once delivered to the physiologists in their laboratories, was chimerical. Vivisection, we recognized at last to be a Method of Research which may be either sanctioned or prohibited as a Method, but which cannot be restricted efficiently by rules founded on humane considerations wholly irrelevant to the scientific enquiry.

On the moral side also, we became profoundly impressed with the truth of the principle to which Canon Liddon refers in the letter I have quoted, viz., that the Anti-Vivisection cause is “of even greater importance to human character than to the physical comfort of our fellow-creatures who are most immediately concerned.” As I wrote of it, about this time in Bernard’s Martyrs:—

“We stand face to face with a New Vice, new, at least in its vast modern development and the passion wherewith it is pursued—the Vice of Scientific Cruelty. It is not the old vice of Cruelty for Cruelty’s sake. It is not the careless brutal cruelty of the half-savage drunken drover, the low ruffian who skins living cats for gain, or of the classic Roman or modern Spaniard, watching the sports of the arena with fierce delight in the sight of blood and death. The new vice is nothing of this kind.... It is not like most other human vices, hot and thoughtless. The man possessed by it is calm, cool, deliberate; perfectly cognisant of what he is doing; understanding, as indeed no other man understands, the full meaning and extent of the waves and spasms of agony he deliberately creates. It does not seize the ignorant or hunger-driven or brutalized classes; but the cultivated, the well-fed, the well-dressed, the civilized, and (it is said) the otherwise kindly disposed and genial men of science, forming part of the most intellectual circles in Europe. Sometimes it would appear as we read of these horrors,—the baking alive of dogs, the slow dissecting out of quivering nerves, and so on,—that it would be a relief to picture the doer of such deeds as some unhappy, half-witted wretch, hideous and filthy in mien or stupified by drink, so that the full responsibility of a rational and educated human being should not belong to him, and that we might say of him, ‘He scarcely understands what he does.’ But, alas! this New Vice has no such palliations; and is exhibited not by such unhappy outcasts, but by some of the very foremost men of our time; men who would think scornfully of being asked to share the butcher’s honest trade: men addicted to high speculation on all the mysteries of the universe; men who hope to found the Religion of the Future, and to leave the impress of their minds upon their age, and upon generations yet to be born.”

Regarding the matter from this point of view,—as our leaders, the most eminent philanthropists of their generation, Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Mount-Temple, Samuel Morley, and Cardinal Manning, emphatically did,—the reasons for calling for the total Prohibition of Vivisection rather than for its Restriction became actually clearer in our eyes on the side of the human moral interests than on that of the physical interests of the poor brutes. We felt that so long as the practice should be sanctioned at all, so long the Vice of Scientific Cruelty would spring up in the fresh minds of students, and be kept alive everywhere. It was therefore absolutely needful to reach the germ of the disease, and not merely to endeavour to allay the worst symptoms and outbreaks. It is the passion itself which needs to be sternly suppressed; and this can only be done by stopping altogether the practice which is its outcome, and on which it feeds and grows.

But (say our opponents), “Are you prepared to relinquish all the benefits which this practice brings to humanity at large?”

Our answer to them, of course, is, that we question the reality of those benefits altogether, but that, placing them at their highest estimation, they are of no appreciable weight compared to the certain moral injury done to the community by the sanction of cruelty. The discovery of the Elixir Vitæ itself would be too dearly purchased if the hearts of men were to be rendered one degree more callous and selfish than they are now. And that the practice of vivisection by a body of men at the intellectual summit of our social system, whose influence must dribble down through every stratum of society, would infallibly tend to increase such callousness, there can exist no reasonable doubt. For my own part, though believing that little or nothing worth mentioning has been discovered for the Healing Art through Vivisection, and that Dr. Leffingwell is right in saying that “if agony could be measured in money, no Mining Company in the world would sanction prospecting in such barren regions,” I yet deprecate the emphasis which many of our friends have laid on this argument against vivisection. We have gone off our rightful ground of the simple moral issues of the question and have seemed to admit (what very few of us would deliberately do) that if some important discovery had been made by Vivisection, our case against it would be lost or weakened. I have been so anxious to warn our friends against this, as I think, very grave mistake in tactics, that I circulated some time ago a little Parable which I may as well summarize here:—

“A party of Filibusters once proposed to ravage a neighbouring island, inhabited by poor and humble people who had always been faithful servants and friends of our country, and had in no way deserved ill-treatment. Some friends of justice protested that the Filibusters ought to be prohibited from carrying on their expedition, but unluckily they did not simply arraign the moral lawfulness of the project, but went on to discuss the inexpediency of the invasion, arguing that the island was very poor and barren, and would not repay the cost of conquest. Here the Filibusters saw their advantage and broke in: ‘No such thing! We are the only people who know anything about the island, and we assure you it is full of mines of gold and silver.’ ‘Bosh!’ replied the just men; ‘we defy you to show us a single nugget.’ On this there was a good deal of shuffling of feet among the Filibusters, and they exhibited some glittering fragments as gold, but being tested these proved to be worthless, and again other fragments which they produced were traced to quite another part of the district, far away from the island. Still it became evident that the Filibusters would go on interminably bringing up specimens, and some day might possibly produce one the value of which could not be well disputed. Moreover the Filibusters (who, like other pirates, were addicted to telling fearful yarns) had the great advantage of talking all along of things they had studied and seen, whereas the men of the party of justice were imperfectly informed about the resources of the island, having never gone thither, and thus they were easily placed at a disadvantage and made to appear foolish. It is true that the Filibusters had set them on the wrong track by clamouring for the invasion on the avowed ground of the spoil they should gather for the nation, and they had only tried to nullify the effect of such appeals to general selfishness by showing that there was really no spoil to be had; and that the invasion was a blunder as well as a crime. But in bandying such appeals to expediency they had put themselves in the wrong box; because to discuss the value of the spoil was, by implication to admit that, if it only were rich, it might possibly be justifiable to go and seize it!”

I have made this long explanation of our policy, because I am painfully aware that among practical people and men of the world, accustomed to compromise on public questions, our adoption of the demand for total prohibition has placed us at a great disadvantage as “irreconcilables;” and our movement has appeared as the “fad” of enthusiasts and fanatics. For the reasons I have given above I think it will appear that while compromise offered any hope of protecting our poor clients from the very worst cruelties, we tried it frankly and in earnest; first in Lord Henniker’s and secondly in Lord Carnarvon’s Bill. When this last effort failed we were left no choice but either to abandon our dumb friends to their fate, or demand for them the removal of the source of their danger.

It will not be necessary for me to recount further with as much detail the history of the Victoria Street Society, of which I continued to act as Hon. Secretary till I finally left London in 1884. Abundance of other friends of animals, active and energetic, were in the field, and our movement, in spite of a score of checks and defeats, continued to spread and deepen. Campbell’s familiar line often occurred to me (with a variation)—