174 TO THE RESCUE OF BIRDS. 
a torturer, or a cruel heart, in whatsoever form, He has 
changed and is not worthy of any respect. But I know 
the Author of life is wholly different from the ideal of the 
cruel hypocrite who calls Him his God on Sunday and 
destroys some of His most beautiful works on week days. 
As Garrison said to the minister who told him his God 
blessed slavery, “ Your God is my Devil.” A good many 
people will find that out before they get through. O mag- 
nificent retribution! This is the one fact that alleviates 
my suffering over cruelty of all kinds, When I think what 
lies before those inflicters of pain in the compensative 
punishment in which I most thoroughly believe, as inust all 
philosophic students of life, my grief ceases ; love of equi- 
librium sees justice and her sword approaching; and my 
pitying heart stands mute before the vision, with no plea to 
stay her hand. Itis not always to bea helpless time for 
those so helpless now; and we will hasten that glad hour. 
Our duty is to convince the thoughtless of their sin, and then 
do what we can to stop it. Frances Power Cobbe says, 
“First make vivisection infamous, then make it illegal.” 
It isa noble, a grand utterance; but experience proves that 
laws are made by wicked men to suit themselves and then 
enforced at their pleasure. One of the wickedest laws 
against birds was passed amid the laughter of the Illinois 
Assembly over an indecent speech, and because of it. 
Human laws are the work of very frail human beings. To 
the rescue of birds we must call something better than laws. 
Besides the argument I have advanced, laws framed by men 
alone lack the influence of women, who, though as mean and 
cruel as men, as a sex, have a quicker, keener discernment 
of right and wrong. These laws are a sort of one-sexed 
creation. Except to ask permission to kill, no boy pays 
any attention to bird laws. We must look elsewhere. The 
law makers amuse themselves after their fatiguing labors 
by killing birds or watching them killed, by those fine shots 
who take half-suffocated pigeons, shoot them as they strive 
