converted, while still in the tenderest period
of infancy, into bad veal, the cows calved and
supplied the dairy; when they had served
those purposes sufficiently, they became that
Roast Beef of Old England, whereat, who is
there now among us who would not say, O?
The cows that were not found to suit well for
dairy purposes were fed upon the best
pastures in their neighbourhood, and became the
best beef that was supplied to the luxurious
who dwelt in towns.

But that is not the worst about Old
England and its beef.  As a natural
consequence of the prevailing mode of pasture
feeding, beef was only fit for killing when the
pastures had provided plenty of fresh food.
The supply of beef was good from August to
November; by help of after-grass and hay,
cattle were kept in fair condition till the cold
weather set in; then they were slaughtered
before they fell into unprofitable leanness,
pickled, dry-salted, and hung, to furnish beef
for winter and the spring.  At Christmas,
therefore, when we have it in perfection, beef
with our forefathers was not more seasonable
than oysters in May; and if they would eat
beef on Christmas Day, they had to choose
between the lean, the pickled, and the dry.

The Christmas show of fat cattle in Baker
Street is the result of an entirely new order
of things.  The only fair way of regarding
beef is to consider it—as it is really—a
manufactured article.  We have been developing
our resources and greatly increasing the
supply, while bettering the quality of beef,
cotton, and other articles.  And as, in other
manufactured goods—so also in beef—it is
produced in various forms, differing in quality.
Beef is only beef, as sugar is sugar; you
may have the raw or the refined, and in each
class there are varieties.

Stall-feeding began in England as a matter
of necessity.  At no very remote time there
were not more people in England and Wales
than could be lodged in London and its
suburbs, as they now exist.  As mouths
multiplied, grazing land became scarce; and,
although farmers commonly considered
stall-feeding to be one of the thousand exigencies
that would work their ruin, they were forced
into it by necessity.  Thus they were driven
to results that caused only the ruin of those
graziers who shut their eyes to change, and
thought to get a living as their fathers did
before them.  Many of these saw their whole
substance waste, while they were spending
capital and labour on an occupation that was
gone.  Land that sent to market in the
course of a year, thirty years ago, some
twenty beasts, each weighing under seventy
stone, and sixty or seventy sheep, may now
be found fattening for the market a yearly
supply of two hundred and fifty beasts, each
averaging the weight of a hundred stone, and
a still greater number of fat sheep.  That is
the sort of progress indicated by the Christmas
Cattle Show.  Is that ridiculous?

Now, let me go into the Cattle Show, and
meditate among the beeves; I may consider
myself meditating also among the tombs, for,
by the bulk of the great body of the gentlemen
among whom I have to work my way, it
is obvious that much beef has been entombed
within them.  I have buried a good deal
myself under my waistcoat.  To the ox we are all
sepulchres, but we have no sepulchral look.
We attend a meeting of the friends of beef,
to take into consideration the provision
requisite for Christmas.  The occasion is a
cheerful one, and we are not afraid to look
our oxen in the face.  Why should we? They
are not less indebted for good cheer to us,
than we are for a like help to them.

Let me relieve the mind of any one who
thinks that if he were a ox he would not
like to be made into beef.  If he were an ox
learned in the annals of his world, he would
like it; he would accept the farmer's care as
a great source of comfort to him, and would
be proud of that love of beef which brings
civilised man into subjection to the bovine
race.  We toil for them, we think for them,
we build them houses and select for them
the choicest food; we cause them to increase
and multiply, tend upon and preserve their
young; maintain a multitude of animals in
full enjoyment of the brute pleasures belonging
to their days of youth and strength;
abolish from among them sickness and the pains
of age.  For one animal that lives to waste
away painfully after a life of vicissitude, we
say that, by our aid, there shall be ten enjoying
youth, and ignorant of want: all that we ask
in return for our care is, that each of the ten
shall close his comfortable life, by dying before
aches and pains can come, and before sickness
touches him.  For ten years of animal
life in one creature, who must during those
years suffer much, we put thirty or forty
years of life among ten animals who enjoy
much, want nothing, and have the brains of
clever men spent in their service.  There are
cruelties connected with the driving and the
marketing of oxen, and some other details,
which are wanton and unnecessary; against
which right-thinking men have to exclaim
loudly.  They are accidents, however, not
essential or fit portions of a system that in its
own integrity is, like all natural systems,
wholly faultless.  If we neither ate beef nor
drank milk we should have little room for
oxen in this country; all the herds that have
grazed upon our pastures—oxen and cows
that have reposed so tranquilly and looked
so much at home upon our fields—all those
creatures, and the whole sum of happiness
they have enjoyed, would never have been
called into existence.  Compare the ox and
fox community.  Truly it is a good thing for
the cattle that man was created with a taste
for milk and beef.  Nothing can be shallower
than the appeal made to humanity by
Vegetarians.  It is a fine thing for the ox that
man is glad to eat him.