A powerful deputation, headed by Lord Shaftesbury, Sir Frederick Elliot,
Mr. Mundella, Mr. Cowper Temple, Cardinal Manning, and other public men, and representing the Society for the Protection of Animals Liable to Vivisection, waited on Mr. Cross on Monday, to urge the preparation of a measure of a restrictive nature. Some of the speakers misunderstand the Report of the Royal Commission, since they complained that that report did not recommend the prohibition of painful experiments even for the purposes of physiological " demonstratidn " to classes,—whereas it did expressly recommend that no such expe- riments, except under the most careful guarantees for complete insensibility under ansesthetics, should be allowed. However, the speeches made were exceedingly effective for every pur- pose, except, apparently, that of assuring the Home Secretary that he should receive a cordial popular support for any reasonable measure. It was obvious that what Mr. Cross really feared was this,—that popular opinion would go beyond anything which he should think it wise to do, and that he might fall between the two stools of scientific zeal on the one side, and popu- lar 'fanaticism on the other. Sir Frederick Elliot, however, by some very skilfully-timed remarks on the injustice of the popular impression that Royal Commissions are appointed, not to contribute to the solution of practical questions, but to contribute to the shelving thereof, and the great need of sub- stantial proof that this view is a libel on the Government, elicited from Mr. Cross a warm disclaimer of any ' shelving ' propensities on his own part. May his deeds verify his words !—which, how- ever, in other parts of his answer, were not altogether of a kind to dispel the prevalent illusion to which Sir F. Elliot referred.
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