Sir PETER henceforth stands sentinel at the gate
of death, and any hungry pauper who shall recklessly attempt to touch the
knocker, will be sentenced to "the treadmill for a month as a rogue and
vagabond!"
One _William Simmons_, a starving tailor, in a perishing condition,
attempts to cut his throat. He inflicts upon himself a wound which, "under
the immediate assistance of the surgeon of the Compter," is soon healed;
and the offender being convalescent, is doomed to undergo the cutting
wisdom of Sir PETER LAURIE. Hear the alderman "Don't you know _that that
sort_ of murder (suicide) _is as bad as any other?_" If such be the
case--and we would as soon doubt the testimony of Balaam's quadruped as
Sir PETER--we can only say, that the law has most shamefully neglected to
provide a sufficing punishment for the enormity. Sir PETER speaks with the
humility of true wisdom, or he would never have valued his own throat for
instance--that throat enriched by rivulets of turtle soup, by streams of
city wine and city gravies--at no more than the throat of a hungry tailor.
There never in our opinion was a greater discrepancy of windpipe. Sir
PETER'S throat is the organ of wisdom--whilst the tailor's throat, by the
very fact of his utter want of food, is to him an annoying superfluity.
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