If there is one piece of evidence more than another which was given before the Royal Commission that deserves rescue from the oblivion of a bluebook, it is that given by Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton. His is one of the keenest legal intellects of modern times, and he at any rate cannot be accused of having any axe of his own to grind. I regret that exigencies of space prevent me from making more than one or two references to it. He begins by taking the case of a ship infected with plague, and infested also with rats, the carriers of plague. The ship enters port. Would it be preferable to kill the rats, and so prevent them and the disease from entering the port and causing untold disaster there, or staying one's hand because the slaughter of the rats would be a painful proceeding? The captain who gives orders for the destruction of the rats inflicts pain and death on them in order to prevent greater pain and more widespread death elsewhere. The captain who says, "Spare the rats," is guilty of the criminal act of causing the death of many innocent human beings. So it is with the Anti-vivisectionists: they see only the pain inflicted, and do not heed the pain prevented. On this score they are in a sense logical when they call Lord Lister a brute, although he of all men living at the present time has been the means of preventing the greatest amount of suffering. They see only the pain which he deliberately inflicted on a few rats and rabbits; they cannot see, or refuse to see the measureless amount of misery he has prevented. In another place the Lord Justice points out that the pain inflicted in all the laboratories of the country put together during a year is infinitesimal compared to that which is inflicted every day in the slaughter of animals for food; to that which ignorant farm labourers inflict without anæsthetics, in spaying animals by thousands in order that beef and mutton may be tenderer or have a more pleasant flavour to the consumer; to that inflicted by sportsmen when their victims, imperfectly shot, die a lingering death; to that which women thoughtlessly allow in order that they may have ospreys in their hats and furs upon their backs. So far as the satisfaction of appetite, the pandering to the so-called sportsman's instincts, or the gratification of vanity are concerned, these things may go on. The average Anti-vivisectionist disregards them, or at least makes no effort to prevent them. The only kind of pain which stirs his feelings, and meets with his opprobrium, and enables him to indulge in his favourite epithets, is _the one justifiable bit of pain in the whole world_--a pain inflicted with the noblest of all objects, and by the most humane of all men (for so the medical profession admittedly is), the object, namely, of preventing future pain, which otherwise would encompass the world of life.