rew nearer to the happy day, would
be treated with still increasing honour. I myself had gone most
closely into the question of expense, and had found that by the use
of machinery the college could almost be made self-supporting. But
we should save on an average L50 for each man and woman who had
departed. When our population should have become a million, presuming
that one only in fifty would have reached the desired age, the sum
actually saved to the colony would amount to L1,000,000 a-year. It
would keep us out of debt, make for us our railways, render all our
rivers navigable, construct our bridges, and leave us shortly the
richest people on God's earth! And this would be effected by a
measure doing more good to the aged than to any other class of the
community!

Many arguments were used against us, but were vain and futile in
their conception. In it religion was brought to bear; and in talking
of this the terrible word "murder" was brought into common use. I
remember startling the House by forbidding any member to use a phrase
so revolting to the majesty of the people. Murder! Did any one who
attempted to deter us by the use of foul language, bethink himself
that murder, to be murder, must be opposed to the law? This thing was
to be done by the law. There can be no other murder. If a murderer
be hanged,--in England, I mean, for in Britannula we have no capital
punishment,--is that murder? It is not so, only because the law
enacts it. I and a few others did succeed at last in stopping the use
of that word. Then they talked to us of Methuselah, and endeavoured
to draw an argument from the age of the patriarchs. I asked them in
committee whether they were prepared to prove that the 969 years, as
spoken of in Genesis, were the same measure of time as 969 years now,
and told them that if the sanitary arrangements of the world would
again permit men to live as long as the patriarchs, we would gladly
change the Fixed Period.

In fact, there was not a word to be said against us except that
which referred to the feelings of the young and old. Feelings are
changeable, I told them at that great and glorious meeting which
we had at Gladstonopolis, and though naturally governed only by
instinct, would be taught at last to comply with reason. I had lately
read how feelings had been allowed in England to stand in the way of
the great work of cremation. A son will not like, you say, to lead
his father into the college. But ough