The Victoria-Street Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection
held a very successful meeting on Tuesday, at the house of Lord Mount-Temple, the Earl of Shaftesbury in the chair. The Bishop of Oxford discussed at it the meaning of Dr. Lyon Playfair's principle that "man's duty to man is greater than his duty to beasts," and maintained that to sub- ordinate absolutely man's duty to the beasts to his duty to man, would necessarily be subversive of his duty to man itself, since it would extingnish in him that spirit of compassion for suffer- ing, as suffering, which could not be extinguished anywhere, without being weakened everywhere. Mr. George Rassell, M.P., and Mr. Reid, M.P., reviewed the recent debate, and showed how little the Home Secretary appeared to understand the working of the Act which he had to administer, and how alarm- ing was his statement that he intended to be guided in its ad- ministration by the Association for the advancement of Medicine by research, a mere Association for promoting Vivisection, so far as it can be promoted under the present Act; and Lord Coleridge made one of his profoundly impressive speeches against the principles and doctrines of the friends of Vivisection.
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