A very enthusiastic meeting was held yesterday week at the
Westminster Palace Hotel in aid of Mr. bit's Bill, which abso- lutely prohibited all painful vivisection,—a meeting at which Miss Cobbe made a speech full of true and even remarkable eloquence,—we judge by the printed form, and not by hearing it, —but one which would carry her, as far as we can judge, much farther than the absolute abolition of vivisection. Miss Cobbe's prin- ciple that all animals capable of hearty affection for man should be treated rather in the light of the feelings thus rendered possible and sometimes realised, than as merely subservient to our needs and comforts, could hardly be consistently acted upon without a complete abolition of the butchers' shops. Such principles might be applied to the higher brute companions of man—which really very often both earn and reciprocate genuine affection— but hardly to sheep and oxen and game, without a revolution in our habits which would turn Englishmen into Hindoos. We fear, humanity—i.e., a horror of inflicting anything like torture— is all we can reasonably ask towards animals in general ; and that the warmer moral feelings on which Miss Cobbe descants so powerfully, must be reserved for the few creatures which actually become the objects of special human regard.
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