The Humanitarian League has been established in the belief that the Promulgation of a high and positive system of morality in the conduct of life, in all its aspects, is one of the greatest needs of the time. It will assert as the basis of that system an intelligible and consistent principle of humaneness, viz.: that it is iniquitous to inflict suffering, directly or indirectly, on any sentient being, except when self-defence or absolute necessity can be justly pleaded—the creed expressed by Wordsworth in his well-known lines,
"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."
This principle the Humanitarian League will apply and emphasise in those cases where it appears to be most flagrantly overlooked, and will protest not only against the cruelties inflicted by men on men, in the name of law, authority and conventional usage, but also (in accordance with the same sentiment of humanity) against the wanton ill-treatment of the lower animals.
The Humanitarian League will therefore demand the thorough revision and more equitable administration of the present Criminal Code, under which a very large amount of injustice and oppression is still frequently perpetrated.
It will deprecate the various provocations and incentives to aggressive warfare, and will point to the evils that result from the ever-increasing array of military and naval armaments.
It will insist on the recognition by the community of its primary duty—the protection of the weak and helpless, and will urge the need of amending a condition of society under which a large portion of the people is in a state of chronic destitution.
Furthermore, in view of the increasing evidence of the sufficiency of a non-flesh diet, the Humanitarian League will aim at the prevention of the terrible sufferings to which countless numbers of highly-organised animals are yearly subjected through the habit of flesh-eating, which is directly responsible for the barbarities of the cattle-traffic and the shambles, and will advocate, as an initial measure, the abolition of private slaughter-houses, the presence of which in our large centres is admitted to be a cause of widespread demoralisation.
It will contend that the practice of vivisection is incompatible with the fundamental principles both of humanity and sound science, and that the infliction of suffering for ends purely selfish, such as sport, fashion, profit, and professional advancement, is largely instrumental in debasing the general standard of morality.
The Humanitarian League will look to its members to do their utmost, both in private and public, to promote the above-mentioned scheme. Its work will involve no sort of rivalry with that of any existing institution; on the contrary, it is designed to supplement and reinforce such efforts as have already been organised for similar objects. The distinctive purpose and guiding policy of the League will be to consolidate and give consistent expression to those principles of humaneness, the recognition of which is essential to the understanding and realisation of all that is highest and best in Humanity.
Communications to be addressed to the Secretary, 38, Gloucester Road,
Regent's Park, London, N. W.
