How is property given? By restraining liberty; that is, by taking it away so far as necessary for the purpose. How is your house made yours? By debarring every one else from the liberty of entering it without your leave.

A civilized society must count animals as worthy of moral consideration and ethical treatment. The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes.

The request of industry to government is as modest as that of Diogenes to Alexander: Get out of my light.

Pleasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good.

All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.

It is with government as with medicine, its only business is the choice of evils. Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty.