On July 15th, 1879, Lord Truro brought into the House of Lords a Bill for the Prohibition of Vivisection. It was not promoted by us, and was in many respects unfortunately managed, but our Society, of course, supported it, Lord Shaftesbury made in defence of it one of his longest speeches. I was in the House of Lords at the time, and thought that there could never be a much more affecting sight than that of the noble old man, who had pleaded so often in that “gilded chamber” for men, women and children, standing there at last in his venerable age, urging with all his simple eloquence the claims of dumb animals to mercy. Against him rose and spoke Lord Aberdare, actually (as he took pains to explain) as President of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals! The Bishop of Peterborough, Dr. Magee, afterwards Archbishop of York, also made then his unhappy speech about the rabbits and the surgical operation; (with which the inventor of that operation, Dr. Clay, said they had “no more to do than the Pope of Rome”). Only 16 Peers voted for the Bill, 97 against it.

On the 16th March, 1880, Mr. Holt’s Bill for total prohibition was down for second reading in the House of Commons, but was stopped by notice of dissolution. From that time our friend, Sir Eardley Wilmot, took charge of a similar Bill promoted by our Society. Notice of it was given by Mr. Firth on the 3rd February, 1881. The second reading was postponed, first to July 13th, next to July 27th, and then that day was taken by government. In October of that year (1881) Mr. R. T. Reid took charge of our Bill, on the resignation of Sir Eardley Wilmot. The second reading was postponed on June 28th, 1882, and not till the 4th of April, 1883, after all these heart-breaking postponements and failures, there was at last a Debate. Mr. Reid and Mr. George Russell spoke admirably in favour of the Bill, but they were talked out without a division by a whole series of advocates of vivisection, of whom Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Cartwright, and Lord Playfair, were most eminent. This was the last occasion on which we have been able to obtain a debate in either House. Mr. Reid brought in his Bill again in 1884, but could obtain no day for a second reading.

One touching incident of these earlier years I must not omit. Our Hon. Correspondent at the Hague, Madame van Manen-Thesingh, had written me several letters exhibiting remarkable good sense as well as ardent feeling. One day I received a short note from her telling me that she was dying; and begging me to send over some trustworthy agent at once to the Hague, if, (as she feared) I could not go to her myself. I telegraphed that I would be with her next day, and accordingly sailed that night to Flushing. When I reached her house M. van Manen received me very kindly; but as a man half bewildered with grief. His wife’s disease was cancer of the tongue, and she could no longer speak. She was waiting for me in her drawing-room. It may be imagined how affecting was our half-speechless interview. After a time M. van Manen, at a sign from his wife, unlocked a bureau and took out a large packet of papers. These he placed before her on the table and then left the room. Of course I understood this proceeding was intended to satisfy me that it was with her husband’s entire consent that Madame van Manen gave these papers to me. There were a great many of them, Dutch, Russian, and American securities of one sort or another, and she marked them off one by one on a list which she had prepared. Then she wrote down that she gave me all these, and also some laces and jewellery, to further the Anti-vivisection cause in whatever way I thought best; reserving a donation for the London Anti-vivisection Society. A few efforts to convey my gratitude and sympathy were all I could make. The dear, noble woman stood calm and brave in the immediate prospect of death in its most painful form, and all her anxiety seemed to be that the poor brutes should be effectually aided by her gifts. I left her sorrowfully, and carried her parcel in my travelling bag, first to Amsterdam for a day or two, and then to London, where having summoned our Finance Committee, I placed it in their hands. The contents (duly estimated and sold through the Army and Navy Society) realised (over and above the legacy to the London Society) about £1,350. With this sum we started the Zoophilist.

The Zoophilist thus founded (May 2nd, 1881) under the editorship of Mr. Adams, then our Secretary, has of course been of enormous value to our cause. A new series began on the 1st January, 1883, which I edited till my resignation of the Hon. Secretaryship June, 1884. I also started and edited a French journal of the same size and character, Le Zoophile, from November 1st, 1883, to April, 1884, when the undertaking was abandoned, French readers having obviously found the paper too dry for their taste. Some of them also remonstrated with me against the occasional references in it to religious considerations, and I was frankly counselled by a very influential French gentleman to cease altogether to mention God,—a piece of advice which I distinctly declined to take! The late celebrated Mdlle. Deraismes sent me a beautiful article for Le Zoophile, of which I should have gladly availed myself if she would have allowed me the editorial privilege of dropping about half a page of aggressive atheism; but this, after a pretty sharp correspondence, she refused peremptorily to do. Altogether I was evidently out of touch both with my French staff and French readers.

Beside these two periodicals our Society from the first issued an almost incredible multitude of pamphlets and leaflets. I should be afraid to make any calculation of the number of them and of the thousands of copies sent into circulation. My own share must have exceeded four hundred. Beside these and those of our successive Secretaries (some extremely able) we printed valuable pamphlets, Sermons and Speeches by Lord Shaftesbury, Cardinal Manning, the Lord Chief Justice, the Dean of Llandaff, Professor Ruskin, Bishop Barry, Mr. R. T. Reid, Hon. B. Coleridge, Lady Paget, Canon Wilberforce, Mr. Mark Thornhill, Mr. Leslie Stephen, the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Mackarness), Rev. F. O. Morris, Dr. Arnold, George Macdonald, Mr. Ernest Bell, Baron Weber, and (above all for scientific importance) Mr. Lawson Tait, Dr. Bell Taylor, Dr. Berdoe, and Dr. Clarke.

Some of my own Anti-vivisection pamphlets were collected a few years ago and published by Messrs. Sonnenschein in a volume (crown 8vo., pp. 272) entitled the Modern Rack. Several very useful books of reference were compiled by our Secretary, Mr. Bryan, and published by the Society; notably the Vivisectors’ Directory, the English Vivisectors’ Directory, and Anti-vivisection Evidences. Of the Nine Circles, compiled for me and printed (first edition) at my expense, I shall speak presently.

I must here be allowed to say that the spirited letters, pamphlets and articles by our medical allies, Dr. Berdoe, Dr. Clarke, Dr. Bowie and Dr. Arnold,—above all Dr. Berdoe’s contributions to our scientific literature, have been an immeasurable value to our cause. The day of Dr. Berdoe’s accession to our party at one of our annual meetings must ever be remembered by me with gratitude. His ability, courage and disinterestedness have been far beyond any praise I can give them. Mr. Mark Thornhill also (a distinguished Indian Civil Servant, author of The Indian Mutiny, etc.), has done us invaluable service by his calm, lucid and most convincing writings, notably “The Case against Vivisection,” and “Experiments on Hospital Patients.” Mr. Pirkis, R.N., has been for many years not only by his steady attendance at the Committee but by his unwearied exertions in preparing and disseminating anti-Pasteur literature, one of the chief benefactors of the Society.

Among our undertakings on behalf of the victims of science was the prosecution of Prof. Ferrier at Bow Street on the 17th November, 1881, on the strength of certain reports in the two leading Medical Journals. We had ascertained that he had no license for Vivisection and yet we read as follows in a report of the proceedings at the International Medical Congress of 1881:—

“The members were shown two of the monkeys, a portion of whose cortex had been removed by Professor Ferrier.”—British Medical Journal, 20th August, 1881.

“The interest attaching to the discussion was greatly enhanced by the fact that Professor Ferrier was willing to exhibit two monkeys which he had operated upon some months previously....

“In startling contrast to the dog were two monkeys exhibited by Professor Ferrier. One of them had been operated upon in the middle of January, the left motor area having been destroyed.”—Lancet, October 8th, 1881.

When the reporters who had sent in their reports to the two journals were produced, the following ludicrous examination took place in court:—

Dr. Charles Smart Roy (the Reporter for the British Medical Journal) was asked—

“Q. Did Professor Ferrier offer to exhibit two of the monkeys upon which he had so operated?

“A. At the Congress, no.

“Q. Did he subsequently?

“A. No; he showed certain of the members of the Congress two monkeys at King’s College.

“Q. What two monkeys?

“A. Two monkeys upon which an operation had been performed.

“Q. By whom?

“A. By Professor Yeo” (!!)

The Editor of the Lancet, Dr. Wakeley, was next examined:—

Dr. Wakeley, sworn, examined by Mr. Waddy:—

“Q. Are you the Editor of the Lancet?

“A. I am.

“Q. Can you tell me who it was furnished his Report?

“A. I have the permission of the gentleman to give his name, Professor Gamgee, of Owen’s College, Manchester.

“Mr. Waddy: What I should ask is that one might have an opportunity of calling Professor Gamgee.

“Mr. Gully (Counsel for the defendant): We have communicated with Professor Gamgee, and I know very well he will say precisely what was said by Dr. Roy.”

The position of the Anti-vivisectionists on the occasion was, it must be confessed, like that of the simple countryman in the fair. “You lay your money that Professor Ferrier is under that cup?” “Yes, certainly! I saw both Professor Roy and Professor Gamgee put him there about five minutes ago.” “Here then, see! Hay Presto! Hocus-pocus! There is only Professor Yeo!”

The group of Vivisectors and their allies, Dr. Michael Foster, Dr. Burdon-Sanderson, Dr. Ernest Hart, Prof. Ferrier, Dr. Roy and many more who filled the court, all evinced the utmost hilarity at the success of the device whereby (as a matter of necessity) the Anti-vivisection case collapsed.

At last, in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1884, the truth came to light. In the Prefatory Note to a record of Experiments by David Ferrier and Gerald F. Yeo, M.D., occurs the statement:—

“The facts recorded in this paper are partly the results of a research made conjointly by Drs. Ferrier and Yeo, aided by a grant from the British Medical Association, and partly of a research made by Dr. Ferrier alone, aided by a grant from the Royal Society.”

The conjoint experiences are distinguished by an asterisk; and among them we find those of the two monkeys which formed the subject of the trial. Thus it stands confessed,—actually in the Transactions of the Royal Society,—that Professor Ferrier had the leading share (his name always appears first) in the experiments; and that, conjointly with Professor Yeo, he received a grant from the British Medical Association for performing the same!

If after this experience we have ceased to hope much from proceedings in Courts of Justice against our antagonists, it will not be thought surprising. The Society has been frequently twitted with the failure of this prosecution, “for which” our opponents say, we “had not a tittle of evidence.” Elaborate reports in the two leading Medical journals do not, it appears, afford even “a tittle of evidence!”^[34]

Among other modes in which we endeavoured to push forward our cause, have been special appeals to win over particular churches or other bodies to adopt our principles. Enormous numbers of circulars have been addressed in this manner by our Society to the Clergy of the Church of England, and it is believed that at least 4,000 are on our side in the controversy; more than 2,000 had signed our Memorial several years ago.

Another appeal was addressed by me personally to the Society of Friends through the Clerks of the Monthly and Quarterly Meetings in England and Ireland.

It has proved eminently successful, and has led to the formation of a powerful “Friends’ Anti-vivisection Society,” which lately issued an appeal to other members of their body signed by 2,000 friends, many of them being among the most eminent in England. This has again formed the ground of a fresh appeal on an immense scale in Pennsylvania. Another recent appeal to the Congregationalists has, I hear, been very well received. On one occasion a special Petition to the House of Lords was signed by every Unitarian Minister in London. It was presented by the Archbishop of York, who also presented a Memorial (for Restriction) in 1876 signed by all the heads of Colleges in Oxford.

Another appeal which I ventured to make (printed as a large pamphlet) to “the Humane Jews of England,” entreating them to remonstrate with the 40 German Jews who are the worst vivisectors in Europe, was, unfortunately, a deplorable failure. Four of my own private friends, Jewesses, all expressed their sympathy warmly, and sent handsome contributions to our funds; but not one other Jew or Jewess, high or low, rallied to us, albeit I presented pamphlets to nearly 200 recommended to me as specially well disposed. I shall never be tempted to address the “Humane” Jews of England again!

One other circular I may mention as more successful. I sent to seven hundred Head Schoolmasters the following Letter, with which were enclosed the pamphlets mentioned therein:—

“Permit me respectfully to ask your perusal of the accompanying little paper on ‘Physiology as a Branch of Education.’ I have written it under a strong sense of the necessity which at present exists for some similar caution.

“The leaflet describing a ‘Specimen of Modern Physiological Instruction,’ refers to a scene in Paris which could not be precisely paralleled in an English school, so far as concerns the actual torture of the animals used for exhibition, since the Vivisection Act of 1876 provided that anæsthetics must be used in all cases of Vivisection for Illustration of Lectures.

“It is, however, to be seriously questioned whether even painless, (and therefore not shocking), operations on living animals, performed before boys and girls, by the enthusiastic English admirers of Claude Bernard and Paul Bert, may not excite in the minds of the young witnesses a curiosity unmingled with pity, such as may subsequently prompt them to become the most merciless experimenters; or, at least, advocates and apologists of scientific cruelty.

“Trusting, Sir, that you will pardon the trespass of this letter,

Twelve of these Head Masters, including some of the most eminent, e.g., Mr. Welldon, of Harrow; Dr. Haig, of the Charterhouse; and the lamented Mr. Thring, of Uppingham, wrote me most interesting letters in reply expressing approval of my views. I shall here insert that of Mr. Thring as in many respects noteworthy.

“I received your little pamphlet on physiology, but I hardly know what you expect me to do. My writings on Education sufficiently show how strongly I feel on the subject of a Literary Education; or rather how confident I am in the judgment that there can be no worthy education which is not based on the study of the highest thoughts of the highest men, in the best shape.

“As for Science (most of it falsely so called) if a few leading minds are excepted, it simply amounts, to the average dull worker, to no more than a kind of upper shopwork, weighing out, and labelling, and learning alphabetical formulæ; a superior Grocery-assistant’s work; and has not a single element of higher mental training in it. Not to mention that it leaves out all knowledge of man and life, and therefore is eminently fitted to train men for life and its struggles! Physiology, in its worser sense adds to this a brutalising of the average practitioner, or rather a devilish combination of intellect-worship and cruelty at the expense of feeling and character. For my part, if it were true that vivisection had wonderfully relieved bodily disease for men, if it were at the cost of lost spirits, then I should say, Let the body perish! And it is at the cost of lost spirits! I do not say that under no circumstances should an experiment take place, but I do say that under no circumstance should an experiment take place for teaching purposes. You will see how decided my judgment is on this matter. I send you three Addresses on Education, which in smaller space than my books, will illustrate the positive side of my experience and beliefs.

Our Committee was, in all the years in which I had to do with it, the most harmonious and friendly of which I have ever heard. Lord Shaftesbury, who presided 49 times, and never once failed us when he was expected, was, of course, as all the world knows, a first-rate Chairman, getting through an immense amount of business, while allowing every member his, or her, legitimate rights of speech and voting. He never showed himself, (I have been told,) anywhere more genial and zealous than with us. Lord Mount-Temple attended very frequently, and Lady Mount-Temple from first to last has been one of our warmest and wisest friends. General Colin Mackenzie, a devout and noble old soldier, spoke little, but what he did say was always straight to the mark, and the affectionate respect we all felt for him made his presence delightful. Lady Portsmouth (now the Dowager Countess) attended in those days very regularly and Lady Camperdown has given us her unwearied help from that time to this. I have spoken of the very valuable services of Mr. E. de Fonblanque. In later years my friend Rev. William Henry Channing was a great support to me. The Cardinal was, perhaps, a little reserved, but always carefully kind and courteous, and whatever he said bore great weight. Lord Bute’s advice was very valuable and full of good sense. Mr. Shaen’s legal knowledge served us often. In brief, each member was useful. There never were any parties or cabals in the Committee. It was my business as Hon. Sec. (especially after my colleague, Dr. Hoggan, retired) to lay proposals for action before the Committee. They were sometimes rejected and often completely modified; but we all felt that the one thing we desired was simply to find the best way of forwarding our cause, and we were thankful for the guidance of the wise and experienced men who were our leaders. In short, the feelings which inspired us round that long oak office-table were not ill befitting our work; and now that so many of those who sat there beside me in the earlier years have passed from earth, I find myself pondering whether they have met “Elsewhere;” where, ere long I may join them. They must form a blessed company in any world. May my place be with them, please God! rather than with the votaries of Science, in the “secular to be.”

In later years the personnel of the Committee has of course been largely renewed. Lady Mount-Temple, Lady Camperdown and Mrs. Frank Morrison almost alone remain from the earlier body. Miss Marston also, who originally founded the London Anti-vivisection Society, has been for many years one of the firmest and wisest friends of the Victoria Street Society also. I have spoken above of all that we owe to Capt. Pirkis’ unfailing help at the Committee, even while residing far out of town; and of the zeal wherewith he and his gifted wife founded the first of our Branches, and have laboured in circulating our literature. Miss Monro, Miss Rees, Miss Bryant, and Mrs. Arthur Arnold have never wearied through many years in patiently and vigorously aiding our work. Of our excellent chairman, Mr. Ernest Bell’s services to the Anti-vivisection cause it is needless for me to speak as they must be recognised gratefully by the whole party throughout England.

We have had several successive Secretaries who sometimes took the work much off my hands, sometimes left it to fall very heavily on me and Miss Lloyd. On one occasion, we two, having also lost the clerk, did the entire work of the office for many weeks, inclusive of writing, editing, folding, addressing, and actually posting an issue of the Zoophilist! But my toils and many of my anxieties ended when I was fortunate enough to obtain the services, as Secretary, of Mr. Benjamin Bryan, who had long shown his genuine interest in the cause as editor of a Northern newspaper; and, after a year or two of work in concert with him, I felt free to leave the whole burden on his shoulders and tendered my resignation. The constant presence on the Committee of my long-tried and most valued allies Mr. Ernest Bell, Capt. Pirkis, and Miss Marston left me entirely at rest respecting the course of our future policy in the straight direction of Prohibition.

The last event which I need record is a disagreeable incident which occurred in the autumn of 1892. I had been seriously ill with acute sciatica, and had been only partially relieved by a large subcutaneous dose of morphia given me by my country doctor. In this state, with my head still swimming and scarcely able to sit at a table, I found myself involved in the most acrimonious newspaper controversy which I ever remember to have seen in any respectable journal. It will be best that another pen than mine should tell the story, so I will quote the calm and lucid statement of the author of the excellent pamphlet, “Vivisection at the Folkestone Church Congress” (page 6).

After a résumé of the notorious debate at Folkestone the writer says:—

“The main point of attack in Mr. Victor Horsley’s paper was a book called the Nine Circles which had been published some months before, and contained reports of different classes of cruel experiments on animals, both in England and on the Continent. To this book Miss Cobbe had given the sanction of her name, but she was not personally responsible for any of the quotations, having intrusted the compilation of the book to friends living in London, and who had access to the journals and papers in which the experiments were recorded. Mr. Horsley’s indignation was roused because in a certain number of cases—22 out of the 170 narratives of different classes of experiments, many of them involving a series, and the use of large numbers of animals in each—the mention of the use of morphia or chloroform was omitted. Miss Cobbe, in a letter to the Times of October 11th, while acknowledging that the compilers were bound to quote the fact if stated, expressed her conviction that such statements are misleading, because insensibility is not and cannot be complete during the whole period of the experiment. Dr. Berdoe also wrote in several papers defending Miss Cobbe against Mr. Horsley’s imputations of fraud and intent to deceive, &c., and explaining that the compilers of the book were alone responsible for the omissions. He added, however, a further explanation that, as it was often the painful results, and not the operations which caused them, that it was desired to illustrate, and as these results lasted sometimes for many days or weeks or months and to maintain insensibility during that period was impossible, the omissions were not so important after all.”...

“... The assailant, however, returned to the charge and in a more violent style than before. His letter to the Times of October 17th, was a tirade against Miss Cobbe, worthy, as the Spectator remarked, only of the fifteenth century, in which the words ‘false’ and ‘lie’ were freely used. It was a letter of so libellous a character that it is a matter for wonder that it obtained publication. Miss Cobbe very naturally and properly at once retired from a controversy conducted, as she expressed it in a letter to the Times, ‘outside of all my experience of civilised journalism.’ She concluded with these words: ‘I need scarcely say that I maintain the veracity of every word of the letter which you did me the honour to publish of the 15th inst., as well as the bona fides of all I have spoken or written on this or other subjects during my three-score years and ten.’”

After a week or two I went to Bath to recruit my health after the attack of sciatica; and the first newspaper I took up at the York Hotel, contained a still more violent attack on me than those which had preceded it. On reading it I walked into the telegraph office next door, wired for rooms at my favourite South Kensington Hotel and went up to town with my maid, presenting myself at once to our Committee, which happened to be sitting and arranging for the impending meeting in St. James’s Hall. “Shall I attend,” said I, “and speak, or not? I will do exactly what you wish.” The Committee were unanimously of opinion that I should go to the meeting and take part in the proceedings, and I have ever since rejoiced that I did so. It was on the evening of October 27th. My ever kind friend, Canon Basil Wilberforce took the chair, Col. Lockwood, Bishop Barry, Dr. Berdoe, Mr. Bell, and Captain Pirkis were on the platform supporting me, but above all Mr. George W. E. Russell (then Under Secretary of State for India) made a speech on my behalf for which I shall feel grateful to him so long as I live. We had but slight acquaintance previously, and I shall always feel that it was a most generous and chivalrous action on his part to stand forth in so public a manner as my champion on such an occasion. The audience was more than sympathetic. There was a storm of genuine feeling when I rose to make my explanation, and I found it, for once, hard to command my voice. This is what I said, as reported in the Zoophilist, November 1st, 1892:

“Now to come to the story of the Nine Circles, which I will tell as quickly as possible. When I gave up the Honorary Secretaryship of the Victoria Street Society six years ago, I retired to live among the mountains in Wales; and the chief thing which remained for me to do was to publish as many pamphlets and papers as seemed likely to help the cause. I have just got here my printer’s list of the papers which I have printed in those six years. I have made up the totals, and I find that the number in the six years of books, pamphlets, and leaflets has been 320—that is about one a week—and that 271,350 copies of them were printed; 173 papers having been written by myself. (Cheers.) Some of these were adopted by the Society and honoured by coming out under its auspices; and others I issued quite independently. Amongst those which I issued ‘on my own hook,’ I am happy to say, was this book called the Nine Circles. Therefore our dear and honoured Society is not responsible for that book. I am alone responsible; it was printed at my expense, and Messrs. Sonnenschein published it for me. Therefore, I am the only person concerned with it, and the Society has nothing to do with it. I am thankful to hear that the revised edition will come out under the auspices of the Society. My only privilege will be to pay for it, and that I shall most thankfully do, in order to wipe out the wrong I have done as concerns the present edition. When the present book was got up, I sketched a plan of it, and asked a lady often employed by us who was living in London, and is a good German scholar, to make extracts for me. She knows a great deal about the subject; she also knows German (which I do not do sufficiently for the purpose), and she was living in London while I was 200 miles away. Therefore I asked her to make the extracts of which this book is compiled, and it was afterwards revised,—as Dr. Berdoe has told us,—by him. The book came out; and it appears now that there are some mistakes in it. My assistant had left out certain things which ought to have been stated. I took it for granted,—I was quite wrong to do so,—that all my directions had been carried out, and I made myself responsible for the book. Therefore, whatever error there is in the matter is mine, and I beg that that will be quite understood. (Cheers.) But what is all this tremendous storm which has been raised, and this pulling of the house down about these mistakes? Do they wish us to understand that there are no such things as painful experiments in England? Apparently that is what they are trying to make us think—that there never has been anything of the kind; that they are perfectly incapable of putting any animal to pain. Do they really mean that? Is that what they wish us to understand? If they do not mean that, I do not know what it is they mean. It seems to me that they are raising this tremendous storm very much as if the old slave-holders were to have danced a war-dance round Mrs. Stowe and scalped her for having said that Legree had flogged Uncle Tom with a thousand lashes, when really there were only nine hundred and ninety-nine. (Laughter.) That seems to me to be the case in a nutshell.”—Zoophilist, November 1st, 1892.

I had the gratification to receive soon after the following most kind Address and expression of confidence from the leading Members of the Victoria Street Society:—

We, the undersigned, being supporters of the Victoria Street Society, and others interested in the movement against Vivisection, wish to express the strong feeling of indignation with which we have seen your integrity called in question by men who seem unable to conceive of the pure unselfish devotion of high intellectual gifts to the service of God’s humbler creatures.

It is impossible for those who know anything of the early history of this movement to forget the great personal sacrifice at which you undertook to make it the chief work of your life.

It is equally impossible for us who have watched its progress, to say how highly we have esteemed the indomitable courage and forcible eloquence with which you have exposed the evils inseparable from experiments on living animals.

Further, we wish to record our firm conviction that you have, throughout, recognised the wisdom and the duty of founding your attack on Vivisection upon the truth, and nothing but the truth, so far as you have been able to arrive at it.

We wish, in conclusion, to assure you not only of our special sympathy with you at a time when you have been subjected to a personal attack of an unusually coarse and violent character, but also of our determination to give still more earnest support to the Cause to which you have, at so great a cost, devoted yourself:

Looking back on this long struggle of twenty years, in which so much of my happiness and the happiness of others dearer than myself, has been engulfed, I can see that, starting from the apparently small and subordinate question of Scientific Cruelty, the controversy has been growing and widening till the whole department of ethics dealing with man’s relation to the lower animals has gradually been included in it. That this department is an obscure one, and that neither the Christian Churches nor yet philosophic moralists have hitherto paid it sufficient attention, is now admitted. That it is time that it should be carefully studied and worked out, is also clear.

Sometimes I have thought (as by a law of our being we seem driven to do whenever our hearts are deeply concerned) that a Divine guidance may have presided over all the heart-breaking delays and disappointments of this weary movement; and that it has not been allowed to terminate, as it would certainly have done, had we carried our Bill of 1876 in its original form through Parliament. Then our Society would have dissolved at once; and, after a time, perhaps, the Act, however well designed, would have become more or less a dead letter; and the hydra-heads of Vivisection would have reared themselves once more. But, as it has actually happened, the delay and failure of our earlier efforts and our consequent persistence in them, have fixed attention on this culminating sin against the lower animals, and through it on all other sins against them. A great revision of opinion on the subject is undoubtedly taking place; and while some (especially Roman Catholic) Zoophilists have diligently sought in decrees and manuals and treatises of casuistry for some authority defining Cruelty to animals to be a Sin, the poverty of the results of all such investigations, and of the anxious collation of Biblical texts by Protestants, is gradually revealing the fact that, in this whole department of human duty, we must look to the God-enlightened consciences of living men rather than to the dicta of departed saints, or casuists, whose attention was directed exclusively to the relations of human beings with each other and with God, and who obviously never contemplated those which we hold to the brutes with adequate seriousness,—if at all. Of course we are here met, just as the first anti-Slavery apostles were met, and as the advocates of every fresh development of morality will be met for many a day to come, by the fundamental fallacy of the Christian Churches (in that respect resembling Islam) that there is a finality in Divine teaching, and that they have been for two thousand years in possession of the last word of God to man. Protestants are certainly not bound in any way to occupy such a position, or to assume that a final revise has ever been issued, or ever will be issued by Divine authority, of a Whole Duty of Man. Rather are they called on piously and gratefully to look for fresh light to come down, age after age, from the Father of lights: or (if they please rather so to consider it) further development of the Christian Spirit to be manifested as men learn better to incarnate it in their minds and lives. As for Theists like myself, it is natural for us and in accordance with all our opinions, to believe that such a movement as is now taking place over the civilised world on behalf of dumb animals, is a fresh Divine impulse of Mercy, stirring in thousands of human hearts, and deserving of reverent cherishing and thankful acceptance.

It is my supreme hope that when, with God’s help, our Anti-vivisection controversy ends in years to come, long after I have passed away, mankind will have attained through it a recognition of our duties towards the lower animals far in advance of that which we now commonly hold. If the beautiful dream of the later Isaiah can never be perfectly realised on this planet and none may ever find that thrice “Holy Mountain” whereon they “shall not hurt nor destroy”—yet at least the time will come when no man worthy of the name will take pleasure in killing; and he who would torture an animal will be looked upon as (in the truest sense) “inhuman”; unworthy of the friendship of man or love of woman. The long-oppressed and suffering brutes will then be spared many a pang and their innocent lives made far happier; while the hearts of men will grow more tender to their own kind by cultivating pity and tenderness to the beasts and birds. The earth will at last cease to be “full of violence and cruel habitations.”

The too confident expectations which I entertained of my permanent connection till death with the Society which I had founded and which I designed to make my heir, have alas! been disappointed. It was perhaps natural that in my long exile from London and consequent absence from the Committee, my continual letters of enquiry, advice, and (as I fondly and foolishly imagined) assistance in the work were felt to be obtrusive,—especially by the newer members. One change after another in the Constitution and in the Name of the Society, left me more or less in opposition to the ruling spirits; and before long a much more serious difference arose. The very able and energetic Hon. Sec., Hon. Stephen Coleridge, (who had entered on his office in April, 1897), after making the changes to which I have referred, proposed that we should introduce a Bill into Parliament, no longer on the old lines, asking for the Total Prohibition of Vivisection, but on quite a different basis; demanding certain “Lesser Measures,” not yet distinctly formulated, but intended to supply checks to the practical lawlessness of licensed Vivisectors. Mr. Coleridge and his brother (now Lord Coleridge), had, twelve or fourteen years before, urged me to abandon the demand for Total Prohibition, and to adopt the policy of Restriction and bring in a bill accordingly. But to this proposal I had made the most strenuous resistance, writing a long pamphlet on the Fallacy of Restriction for the purpose; and it had been (as I thought), altogether given up and forgotten. It would appear, however, that the idea remained in Mr. Coleridge’s mind,—with the modification that he now regarded “Lesser Measures” not as final Restriction, but as steps to Prohibition; and for this policy he obtained the suffrage of the majority of the Council, though not of the oldest members.

The reader who will kindly glance back over the preceding pages (300–306), will see the exceeding importance I attach to the maintenance of the strict principle of Abolition,—whereby our party renounces all compromise with the “abominable sin,” and refuses to be again cheated by the hocus-pocus of Vivisectors and their deceptive anæsthetics. But an over-estimate (as it seems to me) of the importance of Parliamentary action, and certainly an under-estimate of that of the great popular propaganda whereon our hopes must ultimately rest,—a propaganda which would be paralyzed by the advocacy of half measures,—caused Mr. Coleridge and his friends to take an opposite view. After a long and, to me, heart-breaking struggle, I was finally defeated by a vote of 29 to 23, at a Council Meeting on the 9th February, 1898. The policy of Lesser Measures was adopted by the newly-christened National Society; and I and all the oldest members and founders of the Victoria Street Society sorrowfully withdrew from what we had proudly, but very mistakenly, called “our” Society. Amongst us were Mr. Mark Thornhill, Miss Marston, Mr. and Mrs. Adlam, Lady Mount-Temple, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Morrison, Lady Paget, Madame Van Eys, and Countess Baldelli. To all workers in the cause these names will stand as representing the very nucleus of the whole party since it began its life 23 years ago. The oldest and most faithful worker of all, Lady Camperdown, who had aided me with the first memorial in 1874, and who had attended the Committee from first to last, had risen from her death-bed to write a letter imploring the Chairman not to support the demand for Lesser Measures. She died before the decision was reached, and her touching letter, in spite of my entreaties, was not read to the Congress.

After leaving the old Society with unspeakable pain and mortification I felt it incumbent on me, while I yet had a little strength left for work and was not wholly “played out” (as I believe I was supposed to be by the new spirits at the office) to establish some centre where the only principle on which the cause can, in my opinion, be safely maintained should be permanently established, and to which I could transfer the legacy of £10,000 which then stood in my Will bequeathed unconditionally to the Committee of the National Society. My first effort was to request the Committee of the London Anti-vivisection Society to give me such pledge as it was competent to afford that it would not promote any measure in Parliament short of Abolition. This pledge being formally refused, there remained for me no resource but to attempt once more in my old age to create a new Anti-Vivisection Society; and I resolved to call it The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, and to make it a Federation of Branch Societies, having its centre in Bristol where my staunch old fellow-workers had had their office for many years established and in first-rate order. I invited as many friends as seemed desirous of joining in my undertaking, to a private Conference here at Hengwrt; and I had the pleasure of receiving and entertaining them for three days while we quietly arranged the constitution of the new Union with the invaluable help of our Chairman, Mr. Norris, K.C., late one of the Justices of the Supreme Court, Calcutta.

The British Union was, in the following month, (June, 1898), formally constituted at a public conference in Bristol; and it is at present working vigorously in Bristol and in its various Branches in Wales, Liverpool, York, Macclesfield, Sheffield, Yarmouth and London. All information concerning it and its special constitution (whereby the Branches will all profit by bequests to the Union) may be obtained by enquiry from either our admirable Hon. Sec., Mrs. Roscoe (Crete Hill, Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol); our zealous Secretary, Miss Baker, 20, Triangle, Bristol; or our Hon. Treasurer, John Norris, Esq., K.C., Devonshire Club, London.

To those of my readers who may desire to contribute to the Anti-Vivisection Cause, and who have shared my views on it as set forth in my numberless pamphlets and letters, and to those specially who, like myself, intend to bequeath money to carry on the war against Scientific Cruelty, I now earnestly say as my final Counsel: SUPPORT THE BRITISH UNION!