Thursday, June 6, 2013

The Rights of Animal Creation

The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing, as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still.  The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.  The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor.  It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate?  What else is it that should trace the insuperable line?  Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse?  But a full-grown horse or dog, is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old.  But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

— Jeremy Bentham (died June 6, 1832)

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)