The Nineteenth Century , No 182, Apr 1892 [‎46v] (97/244)

582
THE NINETEENTH
April
the sea during the transit; 221 oxen, 386 sheep, and 392 pigs
arrived dead at the place of landing; and 93 oxen, 167 sheep, and
130 pigs were so mutilated that they had to be sacrificed on the spot.
In resume, 14,024 animals were thrown into the sea, 1,240 were
landed dead, and 455 were slaughtered on the quay to save them
dying of their wounds and sufferings. One asks oneself what state
the remaining animals were in, which were sold for human food ?
It is not an unnatural or far-fetched idea to connect this state of
things with the excessive and inexplicable extension of cancer within
the last decade. The more and the further cattle is transported
under these conditions, the more tainted (though perhaps not per
ceptibly so) meat must be eaten, the more poison is infused into
the blood. It is not possible that the flesh of an animal which has
been knocked about, frightened, starved, exposed to the heat of the
sun or icy cold for days and weeks, should be as healthy as that of
those taken from our own fields and slaughtered at once, as was the
case in the days of our ancestors.
These considerations, however, were not the only ones that moved
me. I do not think that anybody has the right to indulge in tastes
which oblige others to follow a brutalising occupation, which morally
degrades the man who earns his bread by it. To call a man a butcher
means that he is fond of bloodshed. Butchers often become mur
derers. I remember two cases in the papers last summer where
butchers had been hired to murder individuals whom they did not
even know. After this comes the irrepressible thought. Is it right
to take life in order to feed oneself, when there is plenty of other
available food which will do just as well ?
Having answered these questions to my own satisfaction, I
plunged at once into full-blown vegetarianism. I got very little to
eat, and that not very good, for neither I nor my cook were
hauteur of the situation. I had, however, one, and that a very
great compensation I felt superior to my fellow-beings, treading on
air, my head delightfully clear, and altogether lifted up above material
things. The Poet Laureate's lines to Fitzgerald will give in a few
words the story of my first and unsuccessful attempt.
. . . live on milk and meat and grass ;
And once for ten long weeks I tried
Your table of Pythagoras,
And seem'd at first a thing enskied
(As Shakespeare has it), airy-light,
To float above the ways of men,
Then fell from that half-spiritual height
Chill'd, till I tasted flesh again.
I, too, felt chilled and sleepy by day and night, so tired that I
could hardly walk. The doctor said, ' You have no pulse at all, and
must give in; it does not suit you.' The winter was icy cold and