Page:Henry Stephens Salt - A Plea for Vegetarianism and Other Essays.pdf/88

Rh the trade of the butcher and cattle-breeder. If we all resolve to eat twice as much mutton, there will be twice as many sheep, and the beneficent ﬂesh-eater will observe with complacent self-satisfaction twice as much {risking happiness among the lambs in spring-time !

The fact is that the duty of kindness and gentleness to the lower animals begins only at the time of their births and ends only at their death, nor can it be evaded by any references to ante-natal existence or non-existence. Such devices are only an after-thought by which flesh-eaters try to escape the responsibility of their own acts. It may or may not be better for mankind, that animals should be bred and slaughtered for food : it certainly is not better for the animals themselves.

9. Next we come to what is sometimes described as the great justification of ﬂesh-eating, the argument drawn from nature. Flesh-eating, it is said, cannot be immoral, because it is part of the great natural system whereby the economy of the world is regulated and preserved. The ﬂesh-eater triumphantly quotes Tennyson’s lines in “Maud":—