“Still!” would say these critics who want to see no more laws made because men cannot be made humane by law, and who certainly should logically wish all our present laws removed by law (for this criticism is radical and not one of degree!). “Still!” they would say, “all you have done is to make A. and B. mechanically avoid, for example, caging wild song-birds, or docking horses’ tails; but the devil of natural man is so strong in A. and B. that they will instantly set to work to invent some other form of torture.” This is too cynical. Many of the cruelties that _can_ be prohibited by law—that is to say, those for whose prohibition the true and secret public feeling is ripe—are cruelties that come rather from lack of thought than from a natural savagery. And it is a very large order to say that, because you stop A. and B. from “not thinking” in a certain direction, their lack of thought must result in other cruelties. True, the reason for their “lack of thought” is often that they profit by it; but, even so, it does not follow that if one channel of thoughtless and pain-provoking profit be cut off, they must necessarily seek another. As a fact, many social cruelties (such as the sweating of women, foul housing, and the harmful kind of child labour) are but dubious sources of profit in the long run; and some cruelties practised on animals (such as the wearing of certain feathers, or the docking of horses’ tails) are but the outcome of “fashion.”
To put it another way. We feel there are certain things _our neighbours_ must not do—we even feel that we ourselves must not do them; and we pass laws to put it out of our own reach to yield to the temptation of profit or temper!
Take a person who is guiltless of thought or temptation in the matter, and show him first a number of wild song-birds in freedom, and then a bird fancier’s shop, with the same kinds of birds in their tiny cages, and ask him whether or no he thinks they ought to be kept like that. In nine cases out of ten he will say: “Poor little beggars! No.”
If then, the Legislature passes a law to penalize such caging, this law will be effective and will in time stop wild birds from being caged, because the secret feeling of the majority is really against such a practice.