"I did say so—because it suited me. But I can hardly imagine that they would have carried me on board with violence, or that they would have put all Gladstonopolis to the sword because I declined to go on board."
"Brown had told us that we were to bring you off dead or alive; and dead or alive, I think we should have had you. If the soldiers had not succeeded, the sailors would have taken you in hand." When I asked him why there was this great necessity for kidnapping me, he assured me that feeling in England had run very high on the matter, and that sundry bishops had declared that anything so barbarous could not be permitted in the twentieth century. "It would be as bad, they said, as the cannibals of New Zealand."
"That shows the absolute ignorance of the bishops on the subject."
"I daresay; but there is a prejudice about killing an old man, or a woman. Young men don't matter."
"Allow me to assure you, Mr Crosstrees," said I, "that your sentiment is carrying you far away from reason. To the State the life of a woman should be just the same as that of a man. The State cannot allow itself to indulge in romance."
"You get a sailor, and tell him to strike a woman, and see what he'll say."
"The sailor is irrational. Of course, we are supposing that it is for the public benefit that the woman should be struck. It is the same with an old man. The good of the commonwealth,—and his own,—requires that, beyond a certain age, he shall not be allowed to exist. He does not work, and he cannot enjoy living. He wastes more than his share of the necessaries of life, and becomes, on the aggregate, an intolerable burden. Read Shakespeare's description of man in his last stage—
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'Second childishness, and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything;' |
and the stage before is merely that of the 'lean and slippered pantaloon.' For his own sake, would you not save mankind from having to encounter such miseries as these?"
"You can't do it, Mr President."