ped as
Sir PETER--we can only say, that the law has most shamefully neglected to
provide a sufficing punishment for the enormity. Sir PETER speaks with the
humility of true wisdom, or he would never have valued his own throat for
instance--that throat enriched by rivulets of turtle soup, by streams of
city wine and city gravies--at no more than the throat of a hungry tailor.
There never in our opinion was a greater discrepancy of windpipe. Sir
PETER'S throat is the organ of wisdom--whilst the tailor's throat, by the
very fact of his utter want of food, is to him an annoying superfluity.
And yet, says Sir PETER by inference, "It is _as bad_, William Simmons, to
cut your own throat, as to cut mine!" If true Modesty have left other
public bodies, certainly she is to be found in the court of aldermen.

Sir PETER proceeds to discourse of the mysteries of life and death in a
manner that shows that the executions of his shrievalty were not lost upon
his comprehensive spirit. Suicides, however, have engaged his special
consideration; for he says--

"Suicides and attempts, or apparent attempts, to commit suicide,
very much increase, I regret to say. _I know that a morbid
humanity exists_, and does much mischief as regards the
practice. _I shall not encourage attempts of the kind_, but
shall punish them; and I sentence you to the treadmill for a
month, as a rogue and vagabond. I shall look _very narrowly at
the cases_ of persons brought before me on such charges."

Sir PETER has, very justly, no compassion for the famishing wretch stung
and goaded "to jump the life to come." Why should he? Sir PETER is of that
happy class of men who have found this life too good a thing to leave.
"They call this world a bad world," says ROTHSCHILD on a certain occasion;
"for my part, I do not know of a better." And ROTHSCHILD was even a
greater authority than Sir PETER LAURIE on the paradise of L s. d.

The vice of the day--"a morbid humanity" towards the would-be suicide--is,
happily, doomed. Sir PETER LAURIE refuses to patronise any effort at
self-slaughter; and, moreover, threatens to "look very narrowly at the
cases" of those despairing fools who may be caught in the attempt. It
would here be well for Sir PETER to inform the suicidal part of the public
what amount of desperation is likely to satisfy him as to the genuineness
of the misery suffered. _William Simmons_ cuts a gash in his throat; the
Alderman is not