i88o.] Vivisection Question. 503 
indulge in the hacknied sophism that “ one wrong does not 
excuse another.” We bid him first prove that the infliction 
of pain and death upon animals for important purposes is a 
wrong at all. A certain literary organ tells us that if we 
can only learn how to escape diseases at the cost of the 
lower animals, then noblesse oblige that we should be content 
to suffer ! It might be thought that even the editor cf a 
“ Society journal ” could scarcely fail to see that the same 
principle, if it holds good here, must a fortiori forbid the 
infliction of pain and death upon animals for amusement, 
for convenience, or for luxury. 
There is another inconsistency in the position. As the 
law at present stands we may, if we think proper, keep a 
number of live cobras, rattlesnakes, &c. We may feed them 
with rats, mice, guinea-pigs, rabbits, and we may even take 
pleasure, if so disposed, in the sufferings of the victims. 
In all this we neither break the law nor are our proceedings 
denounced as “ orgies of diabolism.” But suppose, after a 
rabbit has been bitten, we take him out and try to cure him, 
we are then performing a painful and cruel experiment. 
Unless we have a license from the Home Secretary we are 
in peril of fine and imprisonment, and whether we hold such 
certificate or not we shall receive anonymous post-cards 
fraught with abuse. Nay, if we even take the wounded rabbit, 
and after his death submit his fluids and tissues to chemical 
or microscopical examination, we are probably liable to the 
same doom. Or, again, we may poison rats and mice, if we 
think proper, with strychnine, phosphorus, arsenic, or 
baryta, without fear of legal consequences. If we have a 
dog or a cat which we wish to get rid of, no one questions 
our right to give it a dose of potassium cyanide. In short, 
we are allowed to poison animals at pleasure so long as they 
are our own property. But suppose that if we mix with the 
food of such rats, dogs, or cats, some unknown drug or 
some novel chemical preparation, and mark the results ; or 
suppose we administer to such creatures an extract obtained 
from the viscera of an animal or man supposed to have been 
poisoned? We have then broken the law, and outraged 
public opinion. Thus we see that actions which are inno- 
cent as long as performed from wantonness, from the sheer 
love of killing, or at best to get rid of a nuisance, become 
criminal if done for the solution of an important physiolo- 
gical question ; the higher the motive, the worse the adtion ! 
This, then, is the outcome of humanitarian meddling and 
muddling and of governmental submission to the demands 
of organised ignorance. 
