“_It seems to me that it would be difficult to defend this right by any arguments which the light and order of Nature afford_, and that we are beholden for it to the permission recorded in Scripture (_Gen._ ix., 1, 2, 3). To Adam and his posterity had been granted, at the creation, ‘every green herb for meat,’ and nothing more. In the last clause of the passage now produced the old grant is recited and extended to the flesh of animals--‘even as the green herb, have I given you all things.’ But this was not until after the Flood. The inhabitants of the antediluvian world had therefore no such permission that we know of. Whether they actually refrained from the flesh of animals is another question. Abel, we read, was a keeper of sheep, and for what purpose he kept them, except for food, is difficult to say (unless it were sacrifice). Might not, however, some of the stricter sects among the antediluvians be scrupulous as to this point? And might not Noah and his family be of this description? For, it is not probable that God should publish a permission to authorise a practice which had never been disputed.”[191] Thus far as regards the _moral_ aspect of the subject. Dealing with the social and economical view, Paley, untrammelled by professional views, is more decided. In his chapter, _Of Population and Provision, &c._, he writes:-- “The natives of Hindustan being confined, by the laws of their religion, to the use of vegetable food, and requiring little except rice, which the country produces in plentiful crops; and food, in warm climates, composing the only want of life, these countries are populous under all the injuries of a despotic, and the agitations of an unsettled, Government. If any revolution, or what would be called perhaps _refinement of manners (!)_, should generate in these people a taste for the flesh of animals, similar to what prevails amongst the Arabian hordes--should introduce flocks and herds into grounds which are now covered with corn--should teach them to account a certain portion of this species of food amongst the necessaries of life--the population from this single change would suffer in a few years a great diminution, and this diminution would follow in spite of every effort of the laws, or even of any improvement that might take place in their civil condition. In Ireland the simplicity of living alone maintains a considerable degree of population under great defects of police, industry, and commerce.... Next to the mode of living, we are to consider ‘the quantity of provision suited to that mode, which is either raised in the country or imported into it,’ for this is the order in which we assigned the causes of population and undertook to treat of them. Now, if we measure the quantity of provision by the