From thence the beasts be brought in, killed and clean washed by the hands of their bondsmen. For they permit not their free citizens to accustom themselves to the killing of beasts, through the use whereof they think clemency, the gentlest affection of our nature, by little and little to decay
and perish.
The Utopians feel that slaughtering our fellow creatures gradually destroys the sense of compassion, which is the finest sentiment of which our human nature is capable.
What delight can there be, and not rather displeasure, in hearing the barking
and howling of dogs? Or what greater pleasure is there to be felt when
a dog followeth a hare than when a dog followeth a dog? For one thing
is done in both, that is to say, running, if thou hast pleasure therein.
But if the hope of slaughter and the expectation of tearing in pieces
the beast doth please thee, thou shouldst rather be moved with pity to
see a silly innocent hare murdered by a dog: the weak of the stronger,
the fearful of the fierce, the innocent of the cruel and unmerciful. Therefore
all this exercise of hunting, as a thing unworthy to be used of free men,
the Utopians have rejected to their butchers, to the which craft . . .
they appoint their bondmen. For they count hunting the lowest, the vilest
and most abject part of butchery, and the other parts of it more profitable
and more honest, as bringing much more commodity, in that they kill beasts
only for necessity, whereas the hunter seeketh nothing but pleasure of
the silly and woeful beast's slaughter and murder. The which pleasure
in beholding death they think doth rise in the very beasts, either of
a cruel affection of mind or else to be changed in continuance of time
into cruelty by long use of so cruel a pleasure.
