Valuable suggestions concerning the book have reached me from several friends: in particular I am indebted to Sir George Greenwood, who has been actively associated, both in Parliament and elsewhere, with the cause of justice to animals. H. S. S. _January 1922._ CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. THE PRINCIPLE OF ANIMALS’ RIGHTS 1 II. THE CASE OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS 23 III. THE CASE OF WILD ANIMALS 34 IV. THE SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS FOR FOOD 41 V. SPORT, OR AMATEUR BUTCHERY 50 VI. MURDEROUS MILLINERY 59 VII. EXPERIMENTAL TORTURE 67 VIII. LINES OF REFORM 77 APPENDICES 95 BIBLIOGRAPHY 117 INDEX 123 ANIMALS’ RIGHTS. CHAPTER I. THE PRINCIPLE OF ANIMALS’ RIGHTS. Have the lower animals “rights”? Undoubtedly--if men have. That is the point I wish to make evident in this opening chapter. But have men rights? Let it be stated at the outset that I have no intention of discussing the abstract theory of rights, which at the present time is looked upon with suspicion and disfavour by many social reformers, since it has not unfrequently been made to cover the most extravagant and contradictory assertions. But though its phraseology is vague, there is nevertheless a solid truth underlying it--a truth which has always been clearly apprehended by the moral faculty, however difficult it may be to establish it on an unassailable logical basis. If men have not “rights”--well, they have an unmistakable intimation of something very similar; a sense of justice which marks the boundary-line where acquiescence ceases and resistance begins; a demand for freedom to live their own lives, subject to the necessity of respecting the equal freedom of other people. Such is the doctrine of rights as formulated by Herbert Spencer. “Every man,” he says, “is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal liberty of any other man.” And again, “Whoever admits that each man must have a certain restricted freedom, asserts that it is _right_ he should have this restricted freedom.... And hence the several particular freedoms deducible may fitly be called, as they commonly are called, his _rights_” (“Justice,” pp. 46, 62).[1]