William Edward Armytage Axon

“ Let it, then, be clearly understood that the temporary excitement produced by tobacco is gained by the destruction of vital force, and that it contains absolutely nothing which can be of use to the tissues of the body.
Tobacco adds no potential strength to the human frame. It may spur a weary brain or feeble arm to undue exertion for a short time, but its work is destructive, not constructive. It cannot add one molecule to the plasm out of which our bodies are daily built up. ”

“ Without adhering rigidly to the diet, which writers imperfectly acquainted with the philosopher's doctrine and discipline are wont to style Pythagorean, Shelley refrained from meat and wine during the greater part of his Marlow time. Once and again he lapsed suddenly or by degrees from the rules of the Vegetarians, but only to return to them with a stronger opinion that his health required him to abstain from flesh and fermented drinks. It was not possible for a man so sympathetic and observant of human life about him to live anywhere without compassionating the unfortunate of his own species ”

“ People were weary of the inanities of the ‘fashionable novel,’ and were ready to listen to one who had a power of vivacious narrative. In 1881, when he was in his seventy-seventh year, a pleasant tribute of respect and admiration was paid to him in his native town. The then mayor of Manchester (now Sir Thomas Baker) entertained him at a banquet in the town hall 15 Sept. 1881, ‘as an expression of the high esteem in which he is held by his fellow-townsmen and of his services to literature.’ In proposing Mr. Ainsworth's health the mayor gave a curious instance of the popularity of his writings. ”

“ Again, the spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this great reform would insensibly become agricultural; commerce, with all its vice, selfishness, and corruption, would gradually decline; more natural habits would produce gentler manners, and the excessive complication of political relations would be so far simplified that every individual might feel and understand why he loved his country, and took a personal interest in its welfare. ”

“ IN speaking of the physiological position of tobacco, we have to deal with the action of the essential principles of that plant upon the human system. The peculiar effects of tobacco are due to the action of the essential oil of tobacco in the case of chewing and snuffing, and to that combined with the empyreumatic oil in smoking. Nicotine, as this essential principle is called, is so deadly an alkaloid, that the amount of it contained in one cigar, if extracted and administered in a pure state, would suffice to kill two men. ”

“ Many of the institutions in Manchester are intended for the service also of Salford, which, however, has resisted all attempts at municipal amalgamation. The chief public buildings are the museum and art gallery at Peel Park, the technical school, the education offices and the Salford Hospital. The town hall, built in 1825, is no longer adequate for municipal needs. Broughton and Pendleton have each a separate town hall. The large and flourishing technical school was developed from a mechanics’ institution. ”

“ Ainsworth was a fine type of the Elizabethan puritan—learned, sincere, earnest, and uncompromising. He attached himself to those who were styled ‘Brownists,’ who, under the name of ‘Independents,’ afterwards played so important a part in English history, and who were the ancestors of the ‘Congregationalists’ and other free churches of the present time. ”

“ The fact that tobacco reduces the animal temperature is an important one. It shows the fallacy of those who smoke to keep the cold out, and proves conclusively that tobacco is neither a generator nor conserver of vital heat, but, on the contrary, a wasteful destroyer of it.
The influence of tobacco, in liberating the heart from those restraints which regulate its healthy action, naturally leads to the conclusion that in frequent doses that organ must, sooner or later, undergo a structural transformation. ”

“ In the same way he explains the consequences of eating of the tree of evil by Adam and Eve as an allegory that disease and crime have flowed from unnatural diet. Shelley points out that man resembles no carnivorous animal; that physiology indicates him to be a vegetable feeder; and that his loss of instinct in the matter of food can be paralleled by instances of other animals trained to reject their natural aliment. Man's adoption of a wrong diet brings him a diseased system. "Crime is madness: madness is disease." ”

“ Whilst not agreeing with Ainsworth's ‘preposterous zeale in the point and practise of Separation,’ yet as an eye-witness of his life in Amsterdam he praises his ‘humility, sobriety, and discretion,’ and declares that ‘hee lived and died unblameable to the world,’ except in one point, which to many is a strong testimony of Ainsworth's love of the truth. ”

“ The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth appeared in 1805, and was a natural sequel to that by which he had made his reputation. The work, whilst it maintained its author’s fame, did not, on the whole, meet with so favourable a reception as the Life of Lorenzo. ”

“ There is a theory not unknown, even among medical men, that the toxic influences of tobacco are only transitory, and that all the poison is ultimately expelled from the system. But it is certain, from an experiment of M. Morin, [3] that the nicotine can be detected in the tissues of the lungs and liver after death. ”

“ Still the generous mind refuses to be contented with a future for humanity that leaves the poor in their wretchedness; that makes one man die of sensual surfeit whilst another perishes of starvation; that dooms men to war upon their brother men until the judgment day; a future in which cruelty, lust, oppression, and wrongdoing are to be permanent elements. Man is surely worthy of a better fate than to be the tyrant of a world filled with the victims of his unbridled appetites and remorseless power. Man is the butcher of creation. ”

“ His position somewhat improved, and in 1851, when visiting the Great Exhibition, he formed the resolution of founding a chapel for the destitute in Rochdale, but the proposal was so much discouraged by his friends that he abandoned it for a time, and did not put it into execution until 1858. As minister of this chapel he was brought into close contact with the poorest people of a great factory town. He was a vigorous preacher of the orthodox type, and understanding the people's way of life, and speaking a language which they understood, he gathered a great congregation. ”

“ A land redeemed from its curses; where industry would ensure plenty, and where the forces of the world would be working for the solid happiness of the race. Shelley was not the first, nor, let us hope, the last, to see this beatific vision. When Isaiah called upon the people of Israel to obey the everlastingly divine rules, he painted in glowing colours the beauty of the City of the Just, where men should live out their days in peace and righteousness. The Hebrew prophet and the English poet both declare that in the Holy Mountain of the Lord "they shall not hurt nor destroy." ”

“ Tobacco belongs to the class of narcotic and exciting substances, and has no food-value. Stimulation means abstracted, not added, force. It involves the narcotic paralysis of a portion of the functions, the activity of which is essential to healthy life. ”

“ In dismissing the deputation Sir James told them that if the corn laws were repealed great disasters would fall upon the country, the land would go out of cultivation, church and state could not be upheld, the national institutions would be reduced to their elements, and the houses of the leaguers would be pulled about their ears by the people they were trying to excite. ”

“ But, with force insufficient for this purpose, it is exhausted in fruitless efforts, hesitates, wavers, acquires fresh power, commences again, now violent, now feeble, and fulfills very imperfectly the duties which it should perform. Gradually it calms; a foreign element seems to appease the tumult, the heart again becomes regular. ”

“ Those who are not satisfied that man, who ought to be only a little lower than the angels, should for ever live by the torture and misery of his fellow-creatures must devise some way for his escape from the thraldom of evil. If any better expedient than that suggested by Shelley can be found by all means let it be propounded. At present we see that the poverty and misery of the poor, the luxury and sensuality of the rich, whilst equally hurtful, are largely preventible. It is certain that man can live without the use of intoxicants, and without the use of animal flesh. ”

“ The neighbouring justices said, 'He is an old man, and will not live long; let us not trouble him.' Wilkins, the new bishop of Chester, so far from desiring to annoy, frequently inquired after the health and welfare of the good old man. Angier had the courage to admit Oliver Heywood to the communion at Denton after his excommunication. The old man was much affected by the death of his daughter, Mrs. Heywood, and by the extravagance and misconduct of his own son, whose ordination had to be preceded by a confession of his youthful wildness. ”

“ How can we take the benefits and reject the evils of the system which is now interwoven with all the fibres of our being?" This thought is constantly recurring—how shall the greatest happiness of all be secured? ”

“ It will be said that tobacco soothes and cheers the weary toiler, and solaces the overworked brain. Such may be its momentary effects, but the sequelæ cannot be ignored. All such expedients are fallacious. When a certain amount of brain-work or hand-work has been performed, Nature must have space in which to recuperate, and all devices for escaping from this necessity will fail. It is bad policy to set the house on fire to warm our hands by the blaze. ”

“ In the organisation known as the ‘Band of Faith’ he embodied some of the aspirations of his earlier life. He retained his radical convictions to the last, and in 1867 was the moving spirit of a great meeting held at Wakefield in support of manhood suffrage as the basis of the reform agitation then proceeding. The socialism of his earlier years was replaced by more modified convictions as to the help to be given by co-operation in bettering the condition of the people. ”

“ The monopolising eater of animal flesh would no longer destroy his constitution by devouring an acre at a meal, and many loaves of bread would cease to contribute to gout, madness, and apoplexy, in the shape of a pint of porter or a dram of gin, when appeasing the long-protracted famine of the bard-working peasants' hungry babes. The quantity of nutritious vegetable matter consumed in fattening the carcase of an ox would afford ten times the sustenance, undepraving indeed, and incapable of generating disease, if gathered immediately from the bosom of the earth. ”

“ Similar customs are recorded at Whichnor, Staffordshire, and in Germany and France (Andrews, History of the Dunmow Flitch of Bacon Custom, London, 1877) . Probably no more vivid account has been written of the great fire and plague of London than that given in ‘Old St. Paul's.’ The charm of Ainsworth's novels is not at all dependent upon the analysis of motives or subtle description of character. Of this he has little or nothing, but he realises vividly a scene or an incident, and conveys the impression with great force and directness to the reader's mind. ”

“ The heart, then, during the act of smoking, was doing extra work; in some of the experiments this additional labor amounting to more than 50 per cent.
The effect upon the heart is not caused by direct action upon that organ, but by paralyzing the minute vessels which form the batteries of the nervous system. Thus paralyzed, they can no longer offer effectual resistance, and the heart, freed from their control, increases the rapidity of its strokes, expanding the vessels, with an apparent accession, but real waste of force. ”

“ Writing to Leigh Hunt, 29th June, 1817, the poet says, "Do not mention that I am unwell to your nephew, for the advocate of a new system of diet is held bound to be invulnerable by disease, in the same manner as the sectaries of a new system of religion are held to be more moral than other people, or a reformed Parliament must at least be assumed as the remedy of all political evils. ”

“ Young Bruen became an expert dancer. 'At that time,' he said, 'the holy Sabbaths of the Lord were wholly spent, in all places about us, in May-games and May-poles, pipings and dancings, for it was a rare thing to hear of a preacher, or to have one sermon in a year.' When about seventeen he and his brother Thomas were sent as gentlemen-commoners to St. Alban Hall, Oxford, where they remained about two years. He left the university in 1579, and in the following year was married by his parents to a daughter of Mr. Hardware, who had been twice mayor of Chester. ”

“ Why, then, should man turn into liquid poison the golden grain intended for his food? Why should there continue to rise from the earth a chorus of pain, the cries of the creatures who are tortured and slain, to gratify his needless desires? ”

“ Bernard tells us that the father of Atherton had foretold the shortening of life as a penalty for disrespect to his mother. He had, when a youth, threatened her that he would hang himself with his horse's bridle on a common gallows by which they were riding. On the day of his execution he read the morning service to his fellow-prisoners, and was then escorted by the sheriff of the county, a Roman catholic, who is said to have behaved with much unnecessary harshness. ”

“ Shelley, however, did not formally adopt Vegetarianism until the spring of 1812. Harriet Westbrook wrote from Dublin to Miss Hitchiner, on March 14th, 1812, "You do not know that we have forsworn meat and adopted the Pythagorean system. About a fortnight has elapsed since the change, and we do not find ourselves any the worse for it. . . . We are delighted with it, and think it the best thing in the world." ”

“ During the course of the Owenite socialist agitation his fine form, considerable knowledge, ready speech, and power of devising astonishing placards and proclamations made him a notable man. A boy whom he had adopted was publicly ‘named’ by Owen. He was believed to have amassed a fortune as a foreign spy, and his mysterious ways added to his reputation. For several years Baume resided in Manchester, where he organised Sunday lectures, but in 1857 he paid a visit to the Isle of Man, and was so pleased with the place that he took up his residence there in a house in the Archway, Douglas. ”

“ On a natural system of diet, we should require no spices from India; nor wines from Portugal, Spain, France, or Madeira; none of those multitudinous articles of luxury, for which every corner of the globe is rifled, and which are the cause of so much individual rivalship, such calamitous and sanguinary national disputes."
Shelley's Vegetarianism was that of the idealist and the world-builder; of the prophets and the sons of the prophets, who amidst the darkness of the night see afar the heralding gleams of the coming dawn. A world without poverty, without war, without disease ”