94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 eifectually, and no possible proof remains. Once 

 allow that such things may be done with due precautions, and the pre- 

 cautions 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 con- 

 venient practice. The advocates of the scheme admit that the precau- 

 tions 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, cai*ry it out in their own meth- 

 ods. 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 no- 

 ticed, thev 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 eai'liest opportunity, and you do your best to encourage, 

 not merely suicide, but the cruel murder of a helpless man. A death- 

 bed, 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 kind- 

 ness. The agitation of the question, what is the proper moment for 

 smothering your dying father instead of soothing him, is not favorabie 

 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 tender- 

 ness toward it, where there was any legal difficulty in the way of get- 

 ting 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 



