Note 213 — XXXV. RITSON. 1761–1830.

Quoted from an article in the Gentleman’s Magazine, (August, 1787), signed Etonensīs, who, amongst other particulars, states of the hero of his sketch that he was “one of the most original geniuses who have ever existed.... He was well skilled in natural philosophy, and might be said to have been a moral philosopher, not in theory only, but in strict and uniform practice. He was remarkably humane and charitable; and, though poor, was a bold and avowed enemy to every species of oppression.... Certain it is, that he accounted the murder (as he called it) of the meanest animal, except in self defence, a very criminal breach of the laws of nature; insisting that the creator of all things had constituted man not the tyrant, but the lawful and limited sovereign, of the inferior animals, who, he contended, answered the ends of their being better than their little despotic lord.... He did not think it

for he acted in strict conformity with them.... His vegetable and milk diet afforded him, in particular, very sufficient nourishment; for when I last saw him, he was still a tall, robust, and rather corpulent man, though upwards of fourscore.” He was reported it seems, to be a believer in the Metempsychosis. “It was probably so said,” remarks Ritson, “by ignorant people who cannot distinguish justice or humanity from an absurd and impossible system. The compiler of the present book, like Pythagoras and John Williamson, abstains from flesh-food, but he does not believe in the Metempsychosis, and much doubts whether it was the real belief of either of those philosophers.”—Abstinence from Animal Food a Moral Duty, by Joseph Ritson. R. Phillips, London, 1802.