ber of animals, hitherto
harmless, took to attacking their owners with such ferocity, that it
became necessary to put them to a natural death. Again, it was quite
common at that time to see the carcase of a calf, lamb, or kid exposed
for sale with a label from the inspector certifying that it had been
killed in self-defence. Sometimes even the carcase of a lamb or calf was
exposed as "warranted still-born," when it presented every appearance of
having enjoyed at least a month of life.

As for the flesh of animals that had _bona fide_ died a natural death,
the permission to eat it was nugatory, for it was generally eaten by some
other animal before man got hold of it; or failing this it was often
poisonous, so that practically people were forced to evade the law by
some of the means above spoken of, or to become vegetarians. This last
alternative was so little to the taste of the Erewhonians, that the laws
against killing animals were falling into desuetude, and would very
likely have been repealed, but for the breaking out of a pestilence,
which was ascribed by the priests and prophets of the day to the
lawlessness of the people in the matter of eating forbidden flesh. On
this, there was a reaction; stringent laws were passed, forbidding the
use of meat in any form or shape, and permitting no food but grain,
fruits, and vegetables to be sold in shops and markets. These laws were
enacted about two hundred years after the death of the old prophet who
had first unsettled people's minds about the rights of animals; but they
had hardly been passed before people again began to break them.

I was told that the most painful consequence of all this folly did not
lie in the fact that law-abiding people had to go without animal
food--many nations do this and seem none the worse, and even in flesh-
eating countries such as Italy, Spain, and Greece, the poor seldom see
meat from year's end to year's end. The mischief lay in the jar which
undue prohibition gave to the consciences of all but those who were
strong enough to know that though conscience as a rule boons, it can also
bane. The awakened conscience of an individual will often lead him to do
things in haste that he had better have left undone, but the conscience
of a nation awakened by a respectable old gentleman who has an unseen
power up his sleeve will pave hell with a vengeance.

Young people were told that it was a sin to do what their fathers had
done unhurt fo