EUTHANASIA FOX MUKDEKEKS.

Tho Lancet, discussing a a recent proposal that ninrdcrers should be narcotised to death in a lethal chamber, says: — "First nnd foremost is the question whether it is advisable to give to murderers, an. l to them alone, the privilege of being deprived of life by absolute eutliauasia. What have tliey, of all men, done that the pains cf death shall not fall upon them ? And why should they, of all mcv, go ont of existence in a pontic sleep, Jcnowing no more of their death than of their birth. Tbe common theory' is tbat by taking the life ot criminals tlio law deters others, by the awful dicad of the penalty, from committing the crime for the punishment of wl.ich tho penalty is ctul. Is cutlninosia likely to be a deterrent? No man who has been in the practice of medicine for live years would admit anything of the liiinl. Practituiuci-. ul medicine leatn vtiy fcoou the history cf those, by 10

means a limited class, who would w.llingly die at any hour v> ere it not for fear of the suffering that might attend the supreme event. If men never committed suicide, or if we could trust a man under sentence of death to his own devices iv his cell, with appliances for suicide at his command, there would be some reason in the arguineut. IJut when we know that life is so little valued by a large class wearied of it, and that many would gladly seek death if the latter would only come without a pane, it is surely the "perfection of lolly to oiler that class the very method of death which it does not fear. Such a proceeding is liko offering a premium on murder. Why, then, alter the present state of things ? In the present method of execution by hanging there is not one bit too much of the deterrent element ; for, as it is well known physiologically, there is no infliction of special agony beyond that common to dying from any sudden and violent mode oi death."