OCIETY

Cardinal Manning was among the early supporters of the Anti-Vivisection
movement, and was a Vice-President of the National Anti-Vivisection
Society till his death.

He occasionally attended meetings of the committee at my request to
assist the deliberations with his good counsel, and I remember one
occasion when Lord Shaftesbury came and took the chair, and both the
Cardinal and my father and the Bishop of Oxford were present to assist in
an important decision.

I frequently went to the Archbishop's house at Westminster to consult
him; the sumptuous cathedral and palace had not then been built, and the
house at the bottom of Carlisle Place had an air of cold austerity; there
were no carpets on the stone staircase, and the large room in which the
Cardinal received his visitors had nothing in it but a bare table and a
few cushionless chairs. He accepted invitations to dinner from my
father, but although he was gracious and courtly, he ate nothing, and it
was understood that no attention was to be drawn to this abstinence. He
cannot have eaten much anywhere, for he was extremely emaciated.

He did a great service both to the cause of anti-vivisection and to his
Church in 1882. It had been spread abroad, by whom, and on what
authority, I know not, that the Church of Rome had declined to support
those who desired to put down cruel experiments upon animals, and had
declared that animals might lawfully be treated like stocks and stones;
to this shocking suggestion the Cardinal gave a decisive and
authoritative denial at a meeting at Lord Shaftesbury's House on the 21st
of June.

His words were as follows:--

I know that an impression has been made that those whom I represent
look, if not with approbation, at least with great indulgence, on the
practice of vivisection. I grieve to say that abroad there are a
great many (whom I beg leave to say I do _not_ represent) who do
favour the practice; but this I do protest, that there is not a
religious instinct in nature, nor a religion of nature, nor is there
a word in revelation, either in the Old Testament or the New
Testament, nor is there to be found in the great theology which I do
represent, no, nor in any Act of the Church of which I am a member;
no, nor in the lives and utterances of any one of those great
servants of that Church who stand as examples, nor is there an
authoritative utterance anywhere to be fo