DB: Ritvo

In Ritvo's works we find a more realistic portrayal of the growth of the concept of Human treatment of the nonhuman in the Victorian era. Ritvo accurately maps out the successes and failures of the growing movement for animal rights, and the means by which they accomplish their goals. Unlike the inborn sympathies of Jude, or the enlightened moral ideals proffessed by Sewell in Black Beauty, the actual road to animal rights was paved with much less romantic, but much more effective stones. And efficacy was greatly needed when the future Prime Miniester was quoted to describe bull baiting, depicted to the right, as an amusement that "inspired courage and produced a nobleness of sentiment and elevation of mind." (Ritvo, 126).

With such an insurmountable seeming prospect of bringing humane ideals to a nation world-renowned for its abuse of animals, depicted by others as "the hell of dumb animals" (Ritvo, 126), where even its ruler admitted that "the English are inclined to be more cruel to animals than some other civilized nations are." (Ritvo, 126), animal rights activists turned to the best tools available to them.

Religion and the Crown

By a mixture of claiming the moral high ground in their human treatment of animals, and depicting the English as themselves possessed of a national aptitude for animal sympathies, howsoever false such statements may have been, true animal rights proponents guilted and manipulated the common man into supporting their own ends, regardless of means.

This then, represents real human sympathetic imagination in practice, the ability to understand others' goals and fears, and use them to further your own ends. Without such a sympathetic understanding, such masterful manipulation as was shown by animal rights activists would be an impossible undertaking, but by understanding what would move their audience, what would scare their growing constituency, the leaders of the humane movement were able to accomplish wonderful things in the face of the English common sense, which placed profit and expediency above all else, including the well-being of the dumb beasts said profit and ease depended upon.