Animals' rights considered in relation to social progress : with a bibliographical appendix / by Henry S. Salt.

  • Henry Stephens Salt
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Animals' rights considered in relation to social progress : with a bibliographical appendix / by Henry S. Salt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    instance of how the mockery of one generation may become the reality of the next. There was pubHshed anonymously in 1792 a little volume entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, ^ a rcductio ad absitrdiun of Mary Wollstonecraft's essay, written, as the author informs us, to evince by demonstrative argu- ments the perfect equalit}- of what is called the irrational species to the human. The further opinion is expressed that after those wonderful productions of Mr. Paine and Mrs. Wollstonecraft, such a theory as the present seems to be necessary. It ivas necessary; and a very short term of years sufficed to bring it into effect; indeed, the theory had already been put forward by several English pioneers of nineteenth - century humanita- rianism. To Jeremy Bentham, in particular, belongs the high honour of first asserting the rights of animals with authority and persistence. The legislator, he wrote, ought to interdict everything which may serve to lead to cruelty. The barbarous spectacles of gladiators no doubt contributed to give the Romans that ferocity which they displayed in their civil wars. A people accustomed to despise human ^ Attributed to Thomas Taylor, the Platonist.
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