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<p><font size="7" face="Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif">Henry
S. Salt</font></p>
<p><font size="7" face="Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif"><a href="http://www.henrysalt.co.uk">www.henrysalt.co.uk</a></font></p>
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<p>Henry Stephens Salt is not well-known today but he wrote nearly 40
books most of which cogently argued and urged for some much needed humane
reforms in prisons, schools, in the economic organisations of society
at large, and in the treatment of animals. He also founded the Humanitarian
League and was editor of their publications. He had a profound influence
on Mahatma Gandhi whom he introduced to Thoreau's writings via his own
book on the then little known writer. Gandhi himself acknowledged the
intellectual debt to Thoreau's essay on "civil disobedience" and Henry
Salt in his own formulation of civil disobedience and non-violent noncooperation.</p>
</div>
<p>So why is Henry Salt's writing important today? Firstly, hunting with
dogs is again an issue in the U.K., his book <i>Killing for Sport</i>
along his other writing on fox hunting, hare coursing, stag hunting, cub
hunting and other bloodsports clearly demonstrates the sophisms used by
the bloodsport lobby. Secondly, his masterpiece <i>Animals' Rights: Considered
in Relation to Social Progress </i>remains the best and most readable
book on animal "rights". Whichever humanitarian cause he chose
to write about he managed to use his wit to show the folly of those opposed
to progress. Thirdly, his autobiographies are a fascinating, and amusing,
record of England during his lifetime, particularly of Eton, his friends,
and socialism. Finally, his studies of Thoreau, Shelley and Jefferies
remain among the most insightful ever written. In particular his <i>Life
of Henry David Thoreau </i>is regarded as the finest on the subject and
has just been republished in paperback.
<p>The Savour of Salt: A Henry Salt Anthology <i><br>
</i> Edited by George and Willene Hendrick<br>
This selection offers insights into Henry Salt, the humanitarian reformer
whose thinking was so far ahead of his generation, the biographer and
critic whose essays and books were highly influential and the poet whose
wit and perception could "turn a rhyme and overturn a fool". A child of
privilege in Victorian England, Henry S. Salt relinquished his conventional
life as an Eton master to live and work for causes such as animals' rights,
vegetarianism, socialism, conservation and other humanitarian movements
now better understood than they were during his lifetime. Salt was also
a committed man of letters, writing on Shelley, Thoreau, and De Quincey
amongst others. His friendships included Edward Carpenter, Mahatma Gandhi
and George Bernard Shaw. This anthology celebrates the anniversary of
a remarkable and compassionate man who may be said to have died at least
50 years before his time. </p>
<p>Animals' Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress <i><b><br>
</b></i>Henry S. Salt's classics with a preface by the Peter Singer. Animals'
Rights is a practical book. Initially Salt sets forth the principle of
animals' rights. He then describes the ways and means of the suffering
imposed on animals as an inevitable consequence of the denial of rights.
In the course of the book he refutes, often with humour, every argument
advanced against animal rights in his lifetime and anticipates and refutes
those still to be made. The conclusion offers guidance on "Lines
of Reform" in which he explains the importance of an intellectual,
literary and social crusade against the central cause of oppression: the
disregard of the natural kinship between man and the animals and the consequent
denial of their rights.<br>
</p>
<p>Henry Salt: Life of Henry David Thoreau<i><b><br>
</b></i>Edited George Hendrick, Willene Hendrick, and Fritz Oehlschlaeger<br>
Henry Salt abandoned his mastership at Eton in the 1880s to devote himself
to causes including vegetarianism, socialism, animals' rights, conservation,
and prison reform. He remained a literary critic of distinction, publishing
in 1890 the initial version of Thoreau's Life. With the help of American
friends, he revised the book and published it anew in 1896. This third
version, never before published, gives us Salt's final reading of Thoreau
based on important works published up to 1908, including Thoreau's complete
Journal. Combining a concise narrative of Thoreau's life with a perceptive
treatment of his ideas and writings, it stands as a penetrating study
of Thoreau, stressing his distinctive individuality. Through analysis
of the text and a concise biography, the editors illustrate Salt's growth
as a scholar and his changing views on Thoreau and Thoreau's philosophy.
It will appeal to readers interested in Thoreau or American literature.</p>
<p>Henry Salt Humanitarian Reformer and Man of Letters<i><b><br>
</b></i>by George Hendrick <br>
The precepts that had governed Henry S. Salt's long-time rebellion against
convention were re-emphasized at his burial in remarks read exactly as
he had written them: "I shall die, as I have lived, a rationalist,
socialist, pacifist and humanitarian." Once the death notices had
been published and his devotion to a multitude of causes acknowledged,
this extraordinary man was forgotten. In 1951 Stephen Winsten published
a short book that made Salt known again; Hendrick goes beyond basic biographical
facts to examine the originality of Henry Salt the humanitarian. The volume
variously concentrates on Salt's conventional youth and conversion to
vegetarianism, socialism, and other 'isms', his place as a British man
of letters, his interest in the ideas of Thoreau, and friendships with
George Bernard Shaw, Mahatma Gandhi, and several other writers. Hendrick
gives a clear, concise treatment of the intellectual life and work as
social and literary critic of a figure who may be considered unique in
his commitment to humanitarian goals. The book includes extensive quotations
from many of the radical publications of the 1880s and 1890s in which
Salt was published, as well as statements he made in <i>Humanity</i> and
<i>The Humane Review</i>, two of his own publications. The appendix includes
two of Salt's propaganda plays.<br>
</p>
<p>Seventy Years Among Savages<i> </i>by H. S. Salt<i><b><br>
</b></i>Henry Salt's autobiography <i>Seventy Years Among Savages</i>
was last published in 1921, he later updated it but it was never published.
George Hendrick submitted this revised version for publication to Centaur
Press and although there were plans to publish it in 1992 it never materialised.
Now Centaur Press is owned by Open Gate Press there is a chance it could
be published.<br>
</p>
<p>Millions of people are vegetarians, and the numbers are growing. Many
choose a vegetarian lifestyle for health reasons, but even more do so
because of moral concerns about human treatment of animals, and individual
integrity. For over two thousand years, men and women have defended vegetarianism
as a moral lifestyle. In this book the editors have compiled and commented
on works from this great tradition of moral vegetarianism. Authors include
Pythagoras, Seneca, Plutarch, Porphyry, Bernard Mandeville, David Hartley,
Oliver Goldsmith, William Paley, Percy Shelley, Alphonse de Lamartine,
William Alcott, Richard Wagner, Leo Tolstoy, Anna Kingsford, <b>Henry
Salt</b>, J. Howard Moore, Romain Rolland, Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer,
Tom Regan, Peter Singer, Thomas Auxter, Peter Wenz, Stephen Clark, Frances
Moore Lappe, Harriet Schleifer, Jon Wynne-Tyson, Deane Curtin, and Carol
J. Adams. </p>
<div align="center"><b>Henry Salt on Bloodsports</b></div>
<p>In 1914 the Humanitarian League published a volume of essays called <i>Killing
for Sport</i>, with preface by George Bernard Shaw, in which the various
aspects of bloodsports were for the first time fully set forth and examined
from the standpoint of ethics and economics.</p>
<p align="center"><b>Blooding of Children</b></p>
<p>Of all practices connected with "sport" none are more loathsome
than those known as "blooding" whether it be the "blooding"
of children, which consists in a sort of gruesome parody of the rite of
baptism, or the "blooding" of hounds - viz., the turning out
of some decrepit animal to be pulled down by a pack, by way of stimulating
their blood-lust. Here are a few examples:<br>
On January 4, 1910, the <i>Daily Mirror </i>published an account of the
"blooding" of the Marquis of Worcester, the ten-year-old son
of the Duke of Beaufort. In a front-page illustration the child was shown
with blood-bedaubed cheeks, holding up a dead hare for the hounds, while
a number of ladies and gentlemen were smiling approval in the rear.<br>
Here, again, is an extract from the <i>Cheltenham Examiner</i> of March
25, 1909, in reference to the "eviction" and butchery of a fox
which had taken refuge in a drain.<br>
<font size="2">"Captain Elwes's two children being present at the
death of a fox on their father's preserves, the old hunting custom of
'blooding' was duly performed by Charlie Beacham, who, after dipping the
brush of the fox in his own [sic] blood, sprinkled the foreheads of both
children, hoping they would be aspirants to the 'sport of kings.'"<br>
</font>Presumably the blood in which the brush was dipped was that of
the fox, not of Mr Charles Beacham. But what a ceremony in a civilised
age! One would have thought that twentieth-century sportsmen, even if
they would not spare the fox, might spare their own children!</p>
<div align="center"><b>Hare Coursing</b></div>
<p>Coursing, the practice of chasing a hare with two greyhounds, slipped
simultaneously from the leash, is one the most ancient of blood-sports;
but the spirit of those who take part in it does not seem to have improved
with time. It may be doubted whether modern patrons of the sport are as
chivalrous as those referred to by the old writer Arrian, whose work on
Coursing dates from the second century:<br>
<font size="2">"For coursers, such at least as are true sportsmen,
so not take out their dogs for the sake of catching a hare, but for the
contest and sport of coursing, and are glad if the hare escapes; if she
fly to any thin brake for concealment, though they may see her trembling
and in the utmost distress, they will call off their dogs."<br>
</font>What is the attraction of coursing? The author of "The Encyclopaedia
of Rural Sports" (1852) is forced to admit that coursing has been
dull:<br>
<font size="2">"We may be asked," he says, "what pleasure
there can be for people marshalled in line, at certain distances from
each other, monotonously to walk or ride at a foot pace over a ploughed
field or across a wide health on a bleak November day, the eye anxiously
directed hither and thither to catch the clod or the sidelong furrow that
half conceals poor puss, or to espy the tuft she has parted to make her
form in."<br>
</font>But even so stupid a pastime as this has its charms for many people,
when to the zest of seeing a timid animal's life at stake there is added
the more modern excitement of betting on the prowess of the dogs. <br>
Of the cruelty of coursing, as practised in the Waterloo Cup down, there
can be no question. "What more aggravated form of torture is to be
found," says Lady Florence Dixie, "than coursing with greyhounds
- the awful terror of the hare depicting itself in the laid-back ears,
convulsive doubles, and wild starting eyes which seem almost to burst
from their sockets in the agony of tension which that piteous struggle
for life entails?"<br>
</p>
<p>Henry Salt's thoughts on fox hunting can be found in <i>Animals' Rights
</i>and the <i>Savour of Salt.</i> The <font color="#000000">League Against
Cruel Sports and Hunt Sabatours owe him a great debt whilst the Countryside
Alliance, Leave Country Sports Alone, Conservative Party, and Horse and
Hound would have providing him which foolish statements to write another
40 books..</font></p>
<div align="center"><b>Stag Hunting by George Greenwood</b></div>
<p>But if the inexorable laws of reason and of ethics compel us to cast
our vote against "the noble science" of fox-hunting, what shall
we say of such sport as the hunting of the red deer in the West of England?
Its votaries would fain cast over it the glamour of poetry. They dilate
on the glorious country - the woods of Porlock, the bright heaths of Exmoor,
the exhilaration and excitement of a wild gallop over a wild country in
pursuit of this magnificent wild creature - "the antlered monarch
of the waste." But we have only to turn to the acknowledged textbooks
on the subject (such as Collyns's "Chase of the Wild Red Deer,"
for example) to learn of the horrible cruelties which are the inevitable
concomitants of this much extolled sport - to learn how the hunted animal,
in its terror and despair, will dash over cliffs into the sea, or vainly
seek refuge in the waves from its merciless pursuers upon the land. I
will not waste time and words over it. I regard it as a cruel form of
pleasure which every humane man should shun and shrink from. A relative
of mine, who for many years acted as secretary to a fox-hunt in the West
of England, and who had a great reputation as a rider to hounds, told
me that he had once gone to see the sport on Exmoor, and that nothing
would induce him to repeat that experience, so terrible and so disgusting
were some of the things which he witnessed there. Alsa! that woman should
be a participator in such cruel deeds - ay, and pride herself on her rivalry
with brutal man!. But we know the type. Their eyes are blinded lest they
should see, and their ears closed lest they should hear. They know no
better. They have never learned to think!<br>
Here again we are told there is only one alternative: either these deer
must be preserved to be hunted or they must be exterminated. But again,
also, there can be no doubt as to what our choice should be. We should
lament the loss of these wild denizens of the forest and the moor; but
better, far better, would it be that their lives should be ended, as painlessly
as may be, by the rifle, than they should be preserved for a sport which
is an outrage upon humanity.</p>
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