Sir: I enjoyed Robert Stewart’s review of the book about James I’s grasp of spin (Books, 2 October), but there is one fact he omits.
On pets and people
Sir: Baroness Warnock makes a point — frequently made by those who advocate human euthanasia (‘Moral authority’, 2 October) — that ‘we recognise that in animals, when they’re suffering, it’s best to put them out of their misery’.
Leaving aside any moral or spiritual issues, a practical, and vital, difference between animals and people is that animals do not have estates to bequeath, legacies to leave, wills to make and the complex paraphernalia of property and revenue.
I have done some research into deathbed confessions as made to priests, and the last preoccupation of many individuals was, quite frequently, money (sometimes involving pangs of conscience about past wrongdoing in financial matters).
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