It is a long way, from the plain duty to take care of animals, to the arguments and general behaviour of these societies. Of course, we have seen them here from the most unfavourable point of view. From that point of view, apart from any more favourable aspect, they have their parallel in history. The two instances are, in some ways, very unlike: but the parallelism is worthy of note. The historical instance is more than fifty years old: we have what was said, in 1851, against his worst opponents, by a man who had an unpopular cause to defend. Newman, in 1851, gave a set of lectures on _The Present Position of Catholics in England_: and his sayings, some of them, seem apt to our present subject. Take the following examples. Only, here and there, a word is altered, or a phrase left out, that all offence may be avoided:-- ... "We should have cause to congratulate ourselves, though we were able to proceed no further than to persuade our opponents to argue out one point before going on to another. It would be much even to get them to give up what they could not defend, and to promise that they would not return to it. It would be much to succeed in hindering them from making a great deal of an objection till it is refuted, and then suddenly considering it so small that it is not worth withdrawing. It would be much to hinder them from eluding a defeat on one point by digressing upon three or four others, and then presently running back to the first, and then to and fro, to second, third, and fourth, and treating each in turn as if quite a fresh subject on which not a word had yet been said." ... "No evidence against us is too little: no infliction too great. Statement without proof, though inadmissible in every other case, is all fair when we are concerned. An opponent is at liberty to bring a charge against us, and challenge us to refute, not any proof he brings, for he brings none, but his simple assumption or assertion. And perhaps we accept his challenge, and then we find we have to deal with matters so vague or so minute, so general or so particular, that we are at our wits' end to know how to grapple with them." ... "For myself, I never should have been surprised, if, in the course of the last nine months of persecution, some scandal in this or that part of our cause had been brought to light and circulated through the country to our great prejudice. No such calamity has occurred: but oh! what would not our enemies have paid for only one real and live sin to mock us withal. Their fierce and unblushing effort to fix such charges where they were impossible, shows how many eyes were fastened on us all over the country, and how deep and fervent was the aspiration that some among us might turn out to be a brute or a villain."