Remarks on Cruelty to Animals
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 First edition title page | |
| Author | Anonymous |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subjects | |
| Genre | Pamphlet |
| Publisher | G. Nicholson and Co. |
Publication date | 1795 |
| Publication place | Kingdom of Great Britain |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 54 |
Remarks on Cruelty to Animals[a] is an anonymous pamphlet published in Manchester in 1795 by George Nicholson, an early vegetarian and animal welfare writer. The pamphlet argues against killing animals for food and promotes a vegetarian diet through quotations and examples from historical, literary, and religious sources.
Later writers have discussed the pamphlet as an example of late-18th-century vegetarian advocacy. It has also been cited in scholarship on feminism and animal protection.
The pamphlet was published by George Nicholson (1760–1825), a printer who had previously worked in Bradford before moving to Manchester. Rod Preece describes Nicholson as an early vegetarian and animal welfare writer who published a compilation of earlier vegetarian and animal protection material, On the Conduct of Man to Inferior Animals (1797), later expanded as On the Primeval Diet of Man; Arguments in Favour of Vegetable Foods; On Man's Conduct to Animals &c. &c. (1801).[1]
Remarks on Cruelty to Animals was published anonymously in Manchester in 1795. It comprised 54 pages in duodecimo format and was sold by T. Knott and Champante & Whitrow in London.[2]
The tract appeared as part of a miscellany alongside John Gregory's A Father's Legacy to His Daughters and a compilation titled Preceptive, Moral and Sentimental Pieces. Karen Attar writes that the arrangement was intended to encourage readers to move from one work to the others.[3]
Content
Remarks on Cruelty to Animals presents itself as a compilation supported by "Quotations from History". It relies heavily on John Oswald's The Cry of Nature (1791), and also draws on other authors and works, including William Cowper's poetry, John Dryden's translation of Ovid, George Sale's translation of the Qur'an, Buffon's Natural History, James Adair's History of the American Indians (1775), Peter Simon Pallas's work on sheep (1794), and the medical writer George Cheyne.[3]
The pamphlet opens with an appeal to humane conduct, including a quotation from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile. It argues that reliance on animal food is a luxury rather than a necessity, and notes that poorer people often ate little or no meat for economic reasons. It combines moral arguments, examples of vegetarian practice in antiquity, and health claims about vegetarian diets, including claims about digestion and the effects of meat consumption on the body and mind.[3]
The author also argues that killing animals is unnatural because people are generally averse to bloodshed. The pamphlet includes examples intended to present animals as sentient and capable of reasoning and social conduct, and treats slaughter as murder.[3]
Later discussion
In a 2020 post on a copy acquired by Senate House Library, Karen Attar described the pamphlet's themes as familiar in later pro-vegetarian writing. She noted that it does not discuss environmental questions and predates later economic arguments about land use. Attar also suggested that its cheap, portable format could have helped its circulation, but wrote that any influence on later Manchester abstinence advocacy cannot be established.[3]
Remarks on Cruelty to Animals has been cited in scholarship on feminism and animal protection. In a discussion of Mary Wollstonecraft's emphasis on women's rationality and her scepticism toward the late-18th-century "cult of sensibility", Diana Donald cited John Oswald's The Cry of Nature alongside Remarks on Cruelty to Animals in relation to contemporary radical arguments for animal rights.[4]
