Using passages from Scripture to justify his argument, this book by the Anglican minister Humphry Primatt (c. 1735-1776/7) is one of the first works devoted entirely to an attack on cruelty to animals. It is the only known book written by Primatt, but its influence has been wide-ranging.
Primatt was one of the first authors to argue that animals, like humans, feel pain, stating: "pain is pain, whether it be inflicted on man or on beast; and the creature that suffers it … being sensible of the memory of it while it lasts, suffers evil." He moves on to argue that even though animals come in all shapes and sizes it is immoral to harm one: "whether we walk upon two legs or four; whether our heads are prone or erect; whether we are naked or covered in hair; whether we have tails or no tails, horns or no horns, long ears or round ears; or whether we bray like an ass, speak like a man, whistle like a bird, or are mute as a fish—nature never intended these distinctions as foundations for right of tyranny and oppression."
Most of the work consists of passages from the Bible, and the book may have been forgotten had a summary of it not been appended to sermons by John Toogood. It was reprinted in 1822 by Arthur Broome, and caught the attention of social reformers such as William Wilberforce, who, along with Broome, established the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1824. The society gained its royal status in 1840 and continues to promote animal welfare throughout England and Wales to this day.