SIBTHORP, AS A HOST AND AS A CORPSE.
THE perfection of gentlemanly breeding has just been made known to the House of Commons by Colonel Sibthorp. It is not that overflowing hospitality to which he confesses, like a political Ciapelletto, under the name of "corrupt practices at elections"; though hospitality is a gentlemanly virtue. In the Colonel, the hospitable instinct is so strong, that it debars him from drawing the line between " discharging the common duties of life " and "bribery and corruption." But the crowning trait of his good breeding is that which he promises to exhibit hereafter. He ob- jected to the stringent provisions against burial-vaults in the Public Health Bill ; contending for the maintenance of those aristocratic abodes. Mr. Mackinnon had magnanimously de- clared, that rather than be, after death, a nuisance to his neigh- bours, he would be buried in a highway. But Colonel Sibthorp would concur in no such supererogatory removal : he undertook that no "noxious gases" should emanate from himself, and resolved to lie with his fathers. Hitherto it has been held that all are equal in death,. and that the beggar and the king must alike succumb to-the fiat of decomposition. It was known, indeed, on authority, that "your tanner" would last a good many years ; but a colonel, it seems, of gentle birth, is incorruptible, corporeally as well as politically, or will suffer analyzation into none but the genteelest of perfumes. On these grounds, we do not see why vaults should not be left to men of good family, or why well-born colonels should not be exempted from Lord John Russell's bill for the suppression of sandwiches and Christmas-boxes out of season.
Seriously, there is a good deal of truth in Colonel Sibthorp's objections, if he did but know it. He asks, " What are corrupt practices '? "—a very pertinent question. What are they ? who shall define them ? can it be done in an act of Parliament ? Let Mr. Coulson try his hand at that definition : let him draw the line between "refreshments to influence a vote," and "the tray" summoned up for morning callers who possess votes but whose votes the tray is not intended to influence—oh no ! Cannot a man eat your potted anchovy, drink your sherry or your vermut —if he likes physic instead of wine—without your presuming that he has sold himself to you ? Proserpine was doomed to the regions below for eating a grain of pomegranate ; but is the same damnatory bond implied by pecking at a biscuit in the intervals of gossip ? Where draw the line, then ? Is it at beer and cheese I—In truth, the line is not to be drawn. Although Lord John's is a very proper bill, be the sad truth known, that if gentlemen do not feel ashamed of " corrupt practices "—if they do not blush to dabble in that mixture of shabby tyranny, ca- jolery, and dirty bargaining, by which so many are made "honourable "—no act of Parliament can prevent them. If they cannot distinguish between "corrupt practices" and hospitality, just as they distinguish between gentlemen and blackguards, they cannot be taught to do it by statute.
In like manner, a compulsory statute goes but a small way to teach men how they may be nuisances or blessings to their neigh- bours, before and after death. Other men besides colonels are not easy to be convinced of their own untoward influences. Mr. Mackinnon, in aspiring to the highway, probably has a poetic eye to a material resurrection in roadside foliage and hedgerow flowers, on the " nothing of him that doth fade " princi- ple : Colonel Sibthorp prefers being bottled up in a vault. Perhaps he contemplates cremation—the fitting process for urban burial. We can understand the pleasure of remaining among one's friends, inurned ; and in such case a colonel might answer for his own post-mortem gases. But as to salubrity of a " feu " colonel boxed up in the ordinary way—.faugh ! Ask Mr. Walker what is the atmosphere of the most aristocratic vaults.- If crema- tion is fdrbidden, then rural interment is manifestly the decentest, even for the nobility and gentry : for surely it is not the shop- keeper or artisan alone that sickens at the thought of adding to the squalor and disease around the dank churchyard of the town it is not the gentleman, the scholar, the man of refinement and taste, who can prefer such a disposal to the thought that he may " feel the daisies, growing over him," and restore to Nature the ele- ments which his corporeal existence has borrowed from her, with- out impediment to the endless round of beauty and health. But here are colonels that know nothing about such matters, and can- not see why they should not be stored in vaults as well as wine. And while colonels and country gentlemen are so impervious, they are right in objecting to removal. An auxiliary measure, therefore, is wanted—one to establish a normal schoolfor the better education of the said colonels and country gentlemen, in physiology, taste, and the whole duty of man..
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