The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1868-04-26
Assassination a Growing Evil.


expected outbursts. Sometimes it is a dis
ease sometimes it is political, sometimes
a literary, sometimes religious tendency. In
every such case the tendency is marked and
commands the attention of the hour. At the
present moment, if we were to speak of the
world as whole, we should feel justified in
saying that the tendencies are many, and that
many of them are marked and peculiar. Of
all these tendencies that which is at once the
most general and the most pronounced is the
tendency to despise law and order. Indi-
viduals and organized parties seem to have
reached that point at which, impatient ''of
the laws delay" they would be their own law
without any of the laws delay. We seem to
have completed cycle and got back to that
point which antedates law and order-a point
anterior to civilization, and at which every
man was his own lawmaker and his own
avenger. Law, which was meant to be pro-
lection to the weak and resistance to the
strong, has ceased to energize its functions,
the order of nature has been reversed, and
chaos begins to emerge from cosmos. The
qualification of personal or party revenge is
one of the dominant characteristics of the day.
Assassination has become epidemic, and the
range of its influence is commensurate with the
bounds of so-called Christian civilization.
The attempted assassination of a young
man, a prince of the blood royal, in
remote dependency of the British Crown,
has given point and significance to these
thoughts to which, perhaps they would
not otherwise be entitled Prince Alfred
of England has had hitherto, rightly
or wrongly, the reputation of being an amiable
and a popular prince His visit to Australia
has not belied the character which he had
previously acquired. Rumors certainly have
been in circulation not altogether to his credit.
How far these rumors have been based on fact
we cannot tell; but supposing them to have
been true, the worst that they imply is not more
than can be said of most young men similarly
privileged and similarly watched The rea-
sons which may have led to the attempt on his
life we do not pretend to know. The fact that
he has been shot is briefly stated; but, brief
as it is, it connects the attempted assassination
with an organization which, to say no more,
has done but little to entitle it to the approba-
ton of mankind. The would-be assassin may
not have been a Fenian or Fenian hireling
but the fact that in the brief telegram Fenian-
ism and the assassination are connected is one
which cannot be disregarded. The authorities
on the spot are in better position to judge
than we, and they, not we, have made the con-
| necton. The attack on the Prince would have
been startling in any circumstances, but fol-
lowing as it does 80 closely on other events
of similar kind, it makes the world pause for
breath and compels the question ''Whither are
we drifting?" It is only few days since a
prominent Canadian statesman, known to be
the object of bitter hatred to q well known
organization, was shot at his own door. In
our own country, in South America and in
Europe, within the last few weeks, similar deeds
of violence have been committed. In some
cases the crime has been chargeable to
the individual; in other cases the crime
has been chargeable to party of which the
individual was the hireling; but every one of
those cases, ether the crime rested with the
Individual or with the party, has fostered a
growing conviction that, all Christendom over
we are entering upon state of lawlessness and
insecurity. Everywhere within the limits of
| Christian civilization men are beginning to feel
that an evil spirit is at work-a spirit which
thirsts for blood, which is impatient of delay,
which spurns the sacred barriers of civilization
and religion, which remorselessly seeks out its
| ol;aot oud accommodates ;to RanJ;oh ,,rruo,a
We have actually come to this. If man be-
lieves himself to have been wronged he does
not seek satisfaction at the hands of the law.
He knows no law. He knows and feels moth
ing but revenge, and the dagger or the pistol
| is sufficient for his purpose. If man stands
in the way of a party, obstructs its measures
or defeats its purposes, the hired assassin is
| not difficult to find, and the hired assassin Is
all that is required. 1t is thus that difficulties
are being solved, that distractions are being
| removed, that bad passions seek their object
Law is becoming too slow for this go-ahead
age. Men have actually discovered shorter,
sharper and a surer way. Such is the state
of things to which we have been brought; but
the end is not yet.
We have no desire to look at this tendency
of the age from an exclusively party or from
an exclusively individual point Of view. We
are perfectly satisfied that some of the assas-
sinations of recent times are capable of being
traced to party organizations, and that the
miserable hirelings who have done the bloody
work have been more sinned against than
SHINING. We are perfectly satisfied that
some of these deeds of blood have been the
| fruit of individual malice or revenge. The
point, however, which we wish to raise, and
towards which we wish to direct public atten-
t;on IL aside from either of these. How it is