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point of forging a will, or running away with somebody else’s wife.

But the main argument on which they rely is that of economy; for they know that they will sooner gain their end by appealing to men’s pockets, in which they have generally something of their own, than to their heads, which contain for the most part little but borrowed or stolen property; and after all, they believe it to be the readiest test and the one which has most to show for itself. If a course of conduct can be shown to cost a country less, and this by no dishonourable saving and with no indirectly increased expenditure in other ways, they hold that it requires a good deal to upset the arguments in favour of its being introduced, and whether rightly or wrongly I cannot pretend to say, they think that the more medicinal and humane treatment of the diseased of which they are the advocates would in the long run be much cheaper to the country.

I have perhaps dwelt too long upon opinions which can have no possible bearing upon our own, but I have not said the tenth part of what these would-be reformers urged upon me. I feel, however, that I have sufficiently trespassed upon the attention of the reader.

The Erewhonians regard death with less abhorrence than disease. If it be an offence at all, it is one beyond the reach of the law, which is therefore silent upon the subject. They bury their dead in quick-lime, and the ashes are presently scattered over any piece of cultivated ground which the deceased may himself have chosen. No one is permitted to refuse this hospitality to the dead: people therefore generally