# Salt's humanitarianism had a principle as well as a direction

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH07.P019](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH07.P019/#char=1004,1087): "first to citizens, then to slaves, then to animals, and then (presumably) to plants"

The widening sequence has a close contemporary parallel in Henry Salt's *Animals' Rights* (first published 1892; inspected here in the Toronto Metropolitan University transcription headed New York: Macmillan, 1894). Chapter I connects animal rights with Paine and Wollstonecraft, calls their further extension inevitable, and quotes a progression from protecting slaves to protecting animals. Salt is especially pertinent because Chesterton names him earlier in this chapter; this does not establish that this particular passage quotes him.

But Salt's prefatory criterion is unnecessary pain to sentient beings, while Chapter I calls for a consistent principle governing human relations with animals. That gives his position a possible stopping rule which the progression to plants and furniture does not acknowledge. Chesterton's joke tests indiscriminate extension; it does not by itself answer an argument whose scope depends on sentience. The distinction matters to the chapter's demand for a deliberately proportioned ideal: humanitarian reform can itself claim to reason about limits. [Salt, Prefatory Note and Chapter I](https://pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca/victoriananthology/chapter/animals-rights-considered-in-relation-to-social-progress-1892/).

## Sources

- [Henry Salt, Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress](https://pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca/victoriananthology/chapter/animals-rights-considered-in-relation-to-social-progress-1892/), Prefatory Note; Chapter I, paragraphs beginning 'A great and far-reaching effect', 'Why should the law', and 'For the present, however' (web lines 78–113)

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