Defence of Criminals 



poor are systematically starving ; and it is certain 

 that the vivisection of animals — which on the 

 whole is approved by our educated classes (though 

 not by the healthier sentiment of the uneducated) 

 — would have been stigmatised as one of the 

 most abominable crimes by the ancient' Egyptians '^ 

 — if, that is, they could have conceived such a 

 practice possible at all. 



But not only do the moral judgments of man- 

 kind thus vary from age to age and from race 

 to race, but — v/hat is equally remarkable — they 

 vary to an extraordinary degree from class to class 

 of the same society. If the landlord class regards 

 the poacher as a criminal, the poacher, as already 

 hinted, looks upon the landlord as a selfish ruffian 

 who has the police on his side ; if the respectable 

 shareholder, politely and respectably subsisting 

 on dividends, dismisses navvies and the frequenters 

 of public-houses as disorderly persons, the navvy 

 in return despises the shareholder as a sneaking 

 thief. And it is not easy to see, after all, which is 

 in the right. It is useless to dismiss these dis- 

 crepancies by supposing that one class in the nation 

 possesses a monopoly of morality and that the other 

 classes simply rail at the virtue they cannot attain 

 to, for this is obviously not the case. It is almost 

 a commonplace, and certainly a fact that cannot 

 be contested, that every class — however sinful 

 or outcast in the eyes of others — contains within 

 its ranks a large proportion of generous, noble, 



I In the /aier Egyptian centuries vivisection apparently became 

 an approved practice. 



151 



