or a dose of arsenic administered. A judicious shake, an omission to cover him properly, or the exhibition of an over-dose of laudanum, will do the business effectually, and no possible proof remains. Once allow that such things may be done with due precautions, and the precautions will soon be neglected as troublesome formalities. Why bother the doctor and the parson, why ask the sick man's consent, when the case is so clear? Of course the system need not be openly mentioned, but it would be speedily understood to be a highly convenient practice. The advocates of the scheme admit that the precautions of which we have spoken are absolutely necessary to prevent abuse; and we may add that it is simply impossible to enforce their observance. The practice itself once sanctioned, nothing is clearer than that people could, if they chose, carry it out in their own methods. No practice, again, could be more directly destructive of any strong persuasion of the sanctity of life. We need only read a few police reports, to understand how great is the existing tendency to violence of all kinds. Infanticide, as we know, prevails to a terrible extent, and wife-killing is not much less popular. Admit that the slaughter of invalids is also right under certain limitations, and it is easy to guess the consequences. The devotion which the poor display in cases of sickness is often among the most touching and amiable features of their character. In spite of the temptations we have noticed, they will often make noble sacrifices for the comfort of their dying relatives. Tell them plainly that they are rather fools for their pains than otherwise, and that they had better suggest suicide to the sufferer at the earliest opportunity, and you do your best to encourage, not merely suicide, but the cruel murder of a helpless man. A deathbed, instead of being the scene for calling forth the tenderest emotions and the noblest self-sacrifice, will be haunted by a horrid suspicion; the sick man fearing that his departure is earnestly desired, and his friends inclining to the opinion that killing is not murder, but kindness. The agitation of the question, what is the proper moment for smothering your dying father instead of soothing him, is not favorable to the development of those sentiments and the inculcation of those lessons which we generally associate with a sick-bed. In fact, the plan which certain eccentric philanthropists have advocated with such queer enthusiasm has a direct tendency to make men greater brutes than they are, and they are quite brutal enough already."
The Spectator objects that "the gravest of the merely rational objections we can bring against Mr. Tollemache is, that the ideas of which he is the advocate would plainly lead to two entirely new phases of feeling—impatience of hopeless suffering instead of tenderness toward it, where there was any legal difficulty in the way of getting rid of it by the proposed new law—and further, a disposition to regard people as 'selfish' who continued burdens upon others without any near and clear chance of the complete restoration of their own
