SNORERS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2921, 5 August 1882, Page 3

SNORERS.

According to the “New York Times,’’ o man was tried and acquitted in Canada for persistently disturbing a congregation by snoring in church. The “Times’* continues“ Fifty years hence, Justice Smithers’s decision will bo looked upon much as we now look upon the barbarous decisions of corrupt Turkish judges. Nothing can be clearer to every nan who knows anything of physiology than that snoring is not like breathing, a natural and normal function of the human body. Snoring is as unnatural as pain. It is the outcry of the outraged throat at the stupidity of the man who goes to sleep with his mouth open. To pretend that the snorer. does not interfere with the rights of other people is iumply preposterous. Has not every man a natural right to be unmolested by Ibis fellows ? When ho is deprived by public snoring, of the right to worship peaceably at church or of the right to sleep quietly at home; when he is kept awako in sleeping oars, and driven to madness and profanity by snorers in hotel bedrooms are not bis rights interfered with? And how ean Justice Smithers pretend that civilisation and free government would be endangered by the suppression of a practice which tempts men to appeal to violence in order to protect their ears ? We constantly read in the newspapers of men who, while in a state of somnambulism, have walked off from tho rear platforms of sleeping cars while in motion and have been instantly killed. The real truth 'is that in nine cases out of ten these so-called somnambulists are simply snorers who have been seized by fellow-passengers, and thrown off . the train, care being taken to stun them with the poker in order to save them the pain of the fall. There are scores of good mon who hove witnessed the execution of this wild justice without aremon-

strance, feeling that the snorershave deserved their fate. And yet Justice Smithors maintains, in effect, that it is better that scenes of: this kind should constantly occur than that snoring should be punished with fine and imprisonment But the good cause must triumph in spite of judges like the benighted Smithers. If we push on the crusade against snoring, undismayed by temporary defeats, the time will surely come when the snorer will be regarded as an enemy of the human race, and will be pnt down as remorselessly :aa less Ruilty and altogether more excusable Thugs have been put down by the British Indian Government.