"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--
'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?"
"I very nearly did do it. The Britannulist Assembly, in the majesty of its wisdom, passed a law to that effect." I was sorry afterwards that I had spoken of the majesty of the Assembly's wisdom, because it savoured of buncombe. Our Assembly's wisdom was not particularly majestic; but I had intended to allude to the presumed majesty attached to the highest council in the State.
"Your Assembly in the majesty of its wisdom could do nothing of the kind. It might pass a law, but the law could be carried out only by men. The Parliament in England, which is, I take it, quite as majestic as the Assembly in Britannula--"
"I apologise for the word, Mr Crosstrees, which savours of the ridiculous. I did not quite explain my idea at the moment."
"It is forgotten," he said; and I must acknowledge that he never used the word against me again. "The Parliament in England might order a three-months-old baby to be slain, but could not possibly get the deed done."
"Not if it were for the welfare of Great Britain?"
"Not to save Great Britain from destruction. Strength is very strong, but it is not half so powerful as weakness. I could, with the greatest alacrity in the world, fire that big gun in among battalions of armed men, so as to scatter them all to the winds, but I could not point it in the direction of a single girl." We went on discussing the matter at considerable length, and his convictions were quite as strong as mine. He was sure that under no circumstances would an old man ever be deprived of his life under the Fixed Period. I was as confident as he on the other side,--or, at any rate, pretended to be so,--and told him that he made no allowance for the progressive wisdom of mankind. But we parted as friends, and soon after went to dinner.