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no cruelty is perpetrated on the dumb animals doomed to slaughter. This obligation is theoretically recognised, though the most prevalent habit is to ignore the slaughter-house altogether, to draw a veil over the operations that go on inside its walls, and to act on the complacent theory that animals don't mind being killed because they taste so nice when they are eaten. But this is surely to treat the slaughter-house in a very unworthy way. As things are at present, it is the basis of natural life, the cradle of manly health and womanly beauty. The physiologist, though with increasing hesitation, builds his throne there. The medical man, whose patients enjoy their mutton-chops, says that mutton-chops are essential to life, and thereby worships at the same delectable shrine. In fact the butcher is the high priest of modern civilization, and it is a mere unfair distribution of the honours and rewards of life which prevent his being recognised as such.
To treat the operative slaughterer, as he is usually treated, as an unclean creature, a pariah of society, may be logical in the Vegetarian, but it is moral cowardice in the meat-eater. The meat-eater accepts the results of this man's demoralisation of character. Pious and professed Christians are content to allow the deep degradation of the nature of a whole class of men, set apart to do the nation's dirty work of slaughtering, without an apparent thought of the baseness of their conduct. But, happily there are among those who eat flesh many whose consciences are touched with the thought of the consequences which the practice entails both on men and animals. These people would
