Page:Henry Stephens Salt - A Plea for Vegetarianism and Other Essays.pdf/107

Rh eat them ;” “it is absolutely necessary at times to take life ;” “we must be practical, and not give way to humanitarian sentiment”—all these are fallacies which must surely have been employed by many a patriotic cannibal, as well as by the Englishmen who are determined to see no fault in their native beef. There is no lack of instances of a belief in the advantages of a cannibalistic diet. The Grand Khan of Tartary is said to have fattened his magicians and astronomers with the carcases of condemned criminals ; on the same principle, I suppose, as our clergymen and men of science ﬁnd they need plenty of butchers’ meat to insure a proper fulfilment of their professional duties. Richard Cœur de Lion, according to an old English ballad, owed his recovery from a serious illness to a Turk’s head, which his cook dressed for him as a substitute for pork. The Caribbees were said to prefer sucking infants to all other food, and doubtless felt all the affecting partiality for this form of diet which Charles Lamb expressed for roast sucking-pig. In fact, so many merits have been discovered, at different times and in different places, in human ﬂesh, when used *