“‘God has been pleased to create numberless animals intended for our sustenance, and that they are so intended, the agreeable flavour of their flesh to our palates, and the wholesome nutriment which it administers to our stomachs, are sufficient proofs; these, as they are formed for our use, propagated by our culture, and fed by our care, we have certainly a right to deprive of life, because it is given and preserved to them on that _condition_.’ “Now, it has already been argued that the bodies of animals are _not_ intended for the sustenance of man; and the decided opinions of several eminent medical writers and others sufficiently disprove assertions in favour of the wholesomeness of the flesh of animals. The _agreeable taste_ of food is not always a proof of its _nourishing_ or _wholesome_ properties. This truth is too frequently experienced in mistakes, ignorantly or accidentally made, particularly by children, in eating the fruit of the deadly nightshade, the taste of which resembles black currants, and is extremely inviting by the beauty of its colour and shape.[215] “That we have a right to make attacks on the existence of any being _because_ we have assisted and fed such being, is an assertion opposed to every established principle of justice and morality. A ‘condition’ cannot be made without the mutual consent of parties, and, therefore, what this writer terms ‘a condition,’ is nothing less than an unjust, arbitrary, and deceitful imposition. ‘Such is the deadly and stupifying influence of habit or custom,’ says Mr. Lawrence, ‘of so poisonous and brutalising a quality is prejudice, that men, perhaps no way inclined by nature to acts of barbarity, may yet live insensible of the constant commission of the most flagrant deeds.’ ... A cook-maid will weep at a tale of woe, while she is skinning a living eel; and the devotee will mock the Deity by asking a blessing on food supplied by murderous outrages against nature and religion! Even women of education, who readily weep while reading an affecting moral tale, will clear away clotted blood, still warm with departed life, cut the flesh, disjoint the bones, and tear out the intestines of an animal, without sensibility, without sympathy, without fear, without remorse. What is more common than to hear this _softer_ sex talk of, and assist in, the cookery of a deer, a hare, a lamb or a calf (those acknowledged emblems of innocence) with perfect composure? Thus the female character, by nature soft, delicate, and susceptible of tender impressions, is debased and sunk. It will be maintained that in other respects they still possess the characteristics of their sex, and are humane and sympathising. The inconsistency then is the more glaring. To be virtuous in some instances does not constitute