_All offenders against these regulations to be liable to penalties on summary conviction._ Why has not this simple harmless minimum of decent humanity been—as in other countries—long ago adopted? For the usual reasons: Dislike of change; dislike of a little extra trouble and a little extra expense; liberty of the subject. To take the last point first. Dictate to a man how he shall slaughter his own animals—what next! Well! I am all for liberty of the subject. I am for letting him hurt _himself_ as much as ever he likes. I even go so far as to say that prosecutions for attempted suicide are wrong and ridiculous; but where the subject claims to hurt the helpless with impunity, then it seems to me time to hurt the subject. I fancy that in most men’s minds there lurks the feeling: “Oh! a little extra suffering to animals who are going to die anyway in a minute or two—what does it matter? Now, if you were to put it on the ground that it hurts the slaughterer, there’d be something in it!” Yes! It certainly may hurt the _morale_ of the slaughterer—but not much, for he inflicts the needless suffering _without consciousness of cruelty_; and ill actions of which one is not conscious only negatively deteriorate _morale_, in so far as they are a waste of time in which good actions might have been performed. But to say that it does not matter whether we needlessly hurt the sheep or pig because they are going to die anyway is really to say that no suffering matters, however unnecessary, since we must all die and it will be all the same a hundred years hence. It is at all events not a saying that I can imagine coming out of the mouth of a human being in perfect health and the possession of all his faculties, with a knife going in just behind his right ear and wiggling about in his neck and head till it finds his spinal cord between the joints of his vertebræ. And though you may think that the infliction of some seconds of excruciating torture on an animal does not really hurt the animal because she cannot tell you that it does—it conceivably might hurt _you_ a little to feel it was needlessly inflicted. The meat-trades and butchers generally deny the need for change, and claim that the humanity of existing methods cannot be improved on. I really cannot understand this. Take for example two conversations I had with quite humane butchers. I: “So you never stun your sheep before bleeding them?” First Butcher: “Oh! no.” “Why not?” “It isn’t necessary.” “Not to avoid pain?” “Oh! no; there’s no pain.” Ten minutes later:— I: “You always stun your cattle before bleeding them?” Same Butcher: “Oh! yes, always.” “Why!” “Oh! it avoids a lot of pain.” To the second butcher:— I: “Then you never stun your sheep before bleeding them.” Second Butcher: “No, never.” “Why not? Is there any objection?” “No, I don’t see any objection; only it’s never done. I’ve never seen a sheep stunned.” “Just custom?” “Yes, just that.”