We see with pleasure that "the Society for the Protection
of Animals liable to Vivisection," which held its public meeting on Thursday, at the Westminster Palace Hotel, evidently takes the same view which we take of the present ambiguous attitude of the Government in relation to the Bill now before the House of Lords. Lord Shaftesbury, as chairman, hinted his fear that the Bill might be transformed from a measure for the protection of animals liable to vivisection into one for the general protection of vivisectors ; and Mr. Cowper-Temple, M.P., avowed his anxiety lest it might be filled with insidious amendments ;" while Dr. De Noe Walker (one of the most fair and candid, as well as one of the most widely informed of the witnesses whom the recent Commission examined), moved a resolution, seconded by the Earl of Glasgow, that the Society pledges itself, "should the Bill in question be thrown out or essentially weakened," to keep up the agitation on the sabject,—which, indeed, will not, in that case, be at all likely to subside. We have no particular fear of the Bill being essen- tially injured, except by the complicity of the Government itself, whose only serious foes in this matter,—like those, too often, of the animals themselves,—are "they of its own household."
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