Note 255 — XLIII. LAMARTINE. 1790–1869.

The question of kreophagy and anti-kreophagy had already been mooted, it appears, in the Institut, at the period of the great Revolution of 1789, as a legitimate consequence of the apparent general awakening of the human conscience, when slavery also was first publicly denounced. What was the result of the first raising of this question in the French Chamber of Savans does not appear, but, as Gleïzès remarks, we may easily divine it. One interesting fact was published by the discussion in the Deputies’ Chamber—viz., that in the year 1817, in Paris, the consumption of flesh was less than that of the year 1780 by 40,000,000lb., in proportion to the population (see Gleïzès, Thalysie, Quatrième Discours), a fact which can only mean that the rich, who support the butchers, had been forced by reduced means to live less carnivorously.