Sir Henry Thompson wrote a letter to Monday's Times against
the Vivisection Bill of Lord Henniker,—which indeed, if it had any force, would tell quite as much against that of Dr. Lyon Playfair and his scientific friends, though the latter had not at that time been brought in,—of which the chief idea was to maintain that all sport is as bad as vivisection, and the chief aim to throw dust in the eyes of the public. When Sir Henry Thompson enlarges on the agonies of a "writhing worm threaded on a hook," he speaks of a sort of needless pain which the present writer, at least, would refuse to inflict ; but he knows perfectly well that the torture which he him- self speaks of as "as great and as prolonged as it is in their [the ereatures1 nature to endure," is in all probability no torture at all in any sense in which a being with a highly developed nervous system uses the term. So when he speaks of the torture of crimping cod and skate,—which a fishmonger wrote to the next -clay's paper to say that his craft never do while the creature is alive,—and of boiling lobsters to death,—we believe they are always put straight into boiling water, and so killed instantaneously,— he is merely doing all in his power to find foils to the tortures of scientific investigation which may make the latter seem less objectionable. Whatever the anguish inflicted in sport may be, —and doubtless it is often great,—it is usually diminished by the excitement of a chase, and never involves the sort of breach of faith which makes torture inflicted on domesticated animals, animals taught from their first hour to trust men, a kind of treachery as well as cruelty. Sir Henry Thompson's letter was skilful for its purpose, but its purpose was not good, and his skill, we hope, will not succeed.
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