All prophets are more or less fussy, and this old gentleman seems to have been one of the more fussy ones.  Being maintained at the public expense, he had ample leisure, and not content with limiting his attention to the rights of animals, he wanted to reduce right and wrong to rules, to consider the foundations of duty and of good and evil, and otherwise to put all sorts of matters on a logical basis, which people whose time is money are content to accept on no basis at all.

As a matter of course, the basis on which he decided that duty could alone rest was one that afforded no standing-room for many of the old-established habits of the people.  These, he assured them, were all wrong, and whenever any one ventured to differ from him, he referred the matter to the unseen power with which he alone was in direct communication, and the unseen power invariably assured him that he was right.  As regards the rights of animals he taught as follows:-

“You know,” he said, “how wicked it is of you to kill one another.  Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their relations.  No one would now go back to such detestable practices, for it is notorious that we have lived much more happily since they were abandoned.  From this increased prosperity we may confidently deduce the maxim that we should not kill and eat our fellow-creatures.  I have consulted the higher power by whom you know that I am inspired, and he has assured me that this conclusion is irrefragable.

“Now it cannot be denied that sheep, cattle, deer, birds, and fishes are our fellow-creatures.  They differ from us in some respects, but those in which they differ are few and secondary, while those that they have in common with us are many and essential.  My friends, if it was wrong of you to kill and eat your fellow-men, it is wrong also to kill and eat fish, flesh, and fowl.  Birds, beasts, and fishes, have as full a right to live as long as they can unmolested by man, as man has to live unmolested by his neighbours.  These words, let me again assure you, are not mine, but those of the higher power which inspires me.

“I grant,” he continued, “that animals molest one another, and that some of them go so far as to molest man, but I have yet to learn that we should model our conduct on that of the lower animals.  We should endeavour, rather, to instruct them, and bring them to a better mind.  To kill a tiger, for example, who has lived on the flesh of men and women whom he has killed, is to reduce ourselves to the level of the tiger, and is unworthy of people who seek to be guided by the highest principles in all, both their thoughts and actions.