Joseph Ritson (Engraving by James Sayers, published in 1803)
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from Joseph Ritson, A Critical Biography, by Henry Afred Burd, 1916, p.17:
Among the books which Ritson read at Stockton was one which
influenced the whole of his subsequent life. Mandeville's Fahle of the
Bees, which formed the basis of one of the influential schools of thought
of the early eighteenth century, was the direct cause of his forswearing
animal food at the age of nineteen. It was, moreover, the source of his
inspiration in other ways of which he was not aware, and which his
biographers have overlooked. In his Essay on Abstinence from Animal
Food as a Moral Duty, published in 1802, he recounts the circumstances
in the following words
"The compiler himself, induced to serious reflection, by the perusal of
Mandeville's 'Fable of the Bees', in the year, 1772, being the nineteenth year of his
age, has ever since, to the revisal of this sheet, firmly adhered to a milk and
vegetable diet, having, at least, never tasted, during the whole course of those
thirty years, a morsel of flesh, fish, or fowl, or anything to his knowledge prepared
in or with those substances or any extract thereof, unless on one occasion, when
tempted by wet, cold and hunger, in the south of Scotland, he ventured to eat a
few potatoes dressed under the roast; nothing less repugnant to his feelings to be
had ; or except by ignorance or imposition ; unless it may be in eating eggs, which,
however, deprives no animal of life, though it may prevent some from coming into
the world to be murdered and devoured by others."
From Essay upon Abstinence fom Animal Food, 1802:
That the use of animal food disposes man to cruel and ferocious action
is a fact to which the experience of ages gives ample testimony . . .
The barbarous and unfeeling "sports" (as they are called) of the English
- their horse-racing, hunting, shooting, bull and bear baiting, cock-fighting,
prize fighting, and the like, all proceed from their immoderate addiction
to animal food. Their natural temper is thereby corrupted, and they are
in the habitual and hourly commision of crimes against nature, justice,
and humanity, from which a feeling and reflective mind, unaccustomed to
such a diet, would revolt, but in which they profess to take delight. - Essay upon Abstinence
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