Mr. Disraeli, after detailing the first lot of " innocents"
who are marked out for massacre, explained, in answer to Mr. Lowe, that the Vivisection Bill which had come down from the House of Lords was not among the victims, and we hope, therefore that a resolute effort is to be made to carry it, and the grave responsibility thrown on its opponents of talking it out for the Session. Apparently Mr. Lowe himself will take a prominent part in the oppo- sition to it. He has addressed a letter to one of his consti- tuents in the University of London, in which, if we understand him rightly, he treats the right to torture, without legal penalty, as a sort of privilege which the physiologists ought to covet, as long as it is retained by any less educated and leas merciful class in the community :—" The law is this," he writes, " any person may inflict any pain short of torture on any domestic animal, and any torture he pleases on any non-domestic animal ; so long as the law stands so, it is a gross insult to the medical profession to single them out as the only exception to these general rules, and I would advise them not to submit to it." Mr. Lowe's logic is always keen, but his premisses are very apt to be bad. We should have thought that the medical profession,—the profession before all others which tries to alleviate pain,—ought to have held it a distinction rather than an insult to• be the first to sanction, and even invite securities against the rash and need- less infliction of pain, especially as the investigations which render these securities desirable are being systematised for the first time in this country. But Mr. Lowe regards such magnanimity as a blunder, and advises the doctors, instead of setting an example which less cultivated men might be exhorted to follow, to insist on having the beam taken out of their brothers' eyes before they even confess to a mote in their own eyes. Mr. Lowe's action will improve his position with the medical section of his constituency, it will hardly improve it with the faculties of Arts and Laws.
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