Animals' rights considered in relation to social progress / With a bibliographical appendix, by Henry S. Salt. Also an essay on vivisection in America. By Albert Leffingwell.

  • Salt, Henry S., 1851-1939.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Animals' rights considered in relation to social progress / With a bibliographical appendix, by Henry S. Salt. Also an essay on vivisection in America. By Albert Leffingwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    CHAPTER III. THE CASE OF WILD ANIMALS. That wild animals, no less than domestic animals, have their rights, albeit of a less positive character and far less easy to define, is an essential point which fol- lows directly from the acceptance of the general prin- ciple of a jus animaliimi. It is of the utmost impor- tance to emphasize the fact that, whatever the legal fiction may have been, or may still be, the rights of animals are not morally dependent on the so-called rights of property ; it is not to owned animals merely that we must extend our sympathy and protection. The domination of property has left its trail indelibly on the records of this question. Until the passing of *'Martin's Act in 1822, the most atrocious cruelty, even to domestic animals, could only be punished where there was proved to be an infringement of the rights of ownership.^ This monstrous iniquity, so far as re- lates to the domestic animals, has now been removed; but the only direct legal protection yet accorded to wild animals (except in the Wild Birds' Protection Act of 1880) is that which prohibits their being baited or ^ See the excellent remarks on this subject in Mr. E. B. Nichol- son's The Rights of an Animal (ch. III.).