Alice’s thought is a deadpan joke with a sharp edge. Newspapers often use abstract, impersonal legalese to smooth over coercion: “applause was immediately suppressed.” Wonderland turns that euphemism into a concrete, slapstick brutality—bagging guinea-pigs and sitting on them. Alice’s reaction—gladness at having “seen that done”—reveals her habit of learning through observation. Throughout the book she tests rules and words against experience; here she files away a textbook example of how official phrases map (absurdly, even cruelly) onto actions. The humor lies in the mismatch between her polite, almost tutorial tone and the violent silliness of the act. The line also measures Alice’s growing composure. Earlier, she was overwhelmed by nonsensical authority; now she coolly treats the court as a specimen to study. The quote thus captures Carroll’s critique of institutional language that masks power, and Alice’s shift from passive reader of rules to empirical interpreter who refuses to be overawed by titles, wigs, or procedure.