“It has pleased the Almighty to weaken my understanding, to undermine my reason, and to render me unfit for the discharge of my duty. My blood rolls in billows and torrents of despair. It must have vent. How? I possess a place to which I am a dishonour, inasmuch as I am incapable of discharging it properly; I prevent some better man from doing it more justice. This piece of bread which I lament is all that I have to support myself and family; even this I do not merit; I eat it in sin, and yet I live. Killing thought! which a conscience hitherto uncorrupted inspires. I have a wife, also, and my child reproaches me with its existence. But you do not know, my dear friends, that if my unhappy life is not speedily ended, my weak head will require all your care, and I shall become a burthen rather than an assistance to you. It is better that I yield myself a timely sacrifice to misfortune, than, by permitting the delusion to continue longer, I consume the last farthing of my wife’s inheritance. It is a duty of every person to do that which his situation requires; reason commands it, religion approves. My life, such as it is, is a mere animal life, devoid of reason; in my mind, a life which stands in opposition to duty is moral death, and worse than that which is natural. In favour of the few whose life I cannot render happy, it is at least my duty not to become an oppression. I ought to relieve them from a weight which sooner or later cannot fail to crush them.” This unfortunate man, after penning the above account of his morbid feelings, sent his wife to church on Sunday, May 13th, 1783; and after writing an addition to his journal, took a pair of scissors and attempted, although unsuccessfully, to terminate his life by cutting his throat. He then opened the arteries at the wrists, and again failed in destroying himself; he staggered to the window, and saw his wife returning home, upon which he seized a knife used for killing deer, and stabbed himself in the heart. He was lying weltering in his blood when his wife came in, but was not quite dead. M. le Clarc, who relates the case, observes, that he was a man of understanding, and of a lively wit. He possessed a great deal of theoretical learning; his heart was incorruptibly honest. Like every calm and determined self-murderer, he was proud; but his pride was not the pride of rank, of riches, or of learning, but that divine pride which arises from a consciousness of incorruptible honesty, and of being possessed of good powers of mind. The office he held was that of an assistant judge in a small college of justice at Insterberg. His mother had been once deranged in her mind.