New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1881-07-07

at being compelled to flatter so base wretch
with the publicity which feeds his vanity-is
undoubtedly not of perfectly sound mind.
Upon tho degree of his unsOundness we do NOT
undertake to pronounce Judgment, but that
he is mentally and morally off his balance there
can DO no question. 1t is that sort of unsOund-
ness, however, for which the man himself is as
much responsible as though by his own visible
act in prolonged debauchery he had abandoned
self control and left himself to drift at the will
OF murderOus impulses From the accounts we
have of him he has all his life been wrapped up
in himself; in his own Importance; in the
necessity for having everything revolve around
his own petty purposes and paltry ambitions.
1t never occurred to him, or if it did he never
permitted the idea to take full hold of him,
that any affair, civil social, political or reli-
glous, was OF Importance as it concerned the
welfare of society or the promotion of the gem
eral good only as it helped him TO an easy
place or some public position that fed his insa-
table vanity, did he give any matter cOnsidera-
ton. He had and has the insanity of intense
egoism, of morbid self-absorption Did he
pretend devotion to a political principle, it was
only that its success might give him place of
honor and profit; did he volunteer his services
In a political campaign, it was to make himself
prominent before the public as the great orator
he boosted himself to be; did he put on the
disguise of religion, it was to strut before au-
dlcnccs in times of religious revival and swindle
the pious and simple minded did he pretend a
belief in Christianity, it only to parade
himself as a self-appointed champion and gather
the notoricty by which his diseased self-con-
seriousness was fed. How any cause affected
society or touched the general welfare he
never thought nor cared it was only how it
affected him. SO he slid through morbid vanity
into moral obliquity, mental disturbance and
crime. He called himself in advertisements
the famous" the gifted; boosted that he
was great orator. set himself up as the cham
pion of Christianity, and INDUCED in all man.
ncr Of cccenricities to attract attention to him
self, prcierring to be pointed out as a man of
disordercd mind rather than not be noticed at
all. Constantly feeding his own vanity and
egosm, he distinctly promoted the mental I'M
balance which ended at last in the outbreaking
fury of assassination. If he was irresponsible
for the crime itself, which is not to be lightly
admitted, hc must be held morally responsible
for all the steps 10y which he deliberately undid
himself.
We forbear to touch upon the peculiar polit-
cal conditions which undoubtedly operated
upon this mans weak and disordered magma
ton to wrest him still further from his balance
by the influence of great example and the
delusion that he could promote political revo-
luton by the commission of a great crime. But
the lesson of the event would be neglected were
not attention directed to the pernicious in
hucnce and destructive tendency of ungoverned
sclf-concoit and cgOism. Cultivated by lattery
and fed by success, with intolerable arrogance
it rebels against any limitation, and demands
unrestricted influence and power, threatening
destruction to whatever institutions or parties
offer opposition. SOured by disappointments
and gangrened by failures, it resorts to assassi-
nation as the only remaining means whereby TO
purchase the distinction of infamy The dis
ease is the same in both cases. In the one in
eatiable vanity; i'll the other, unrestrained am
bitiOn "rcigns like n mounting devil in the
heart" One in its madness strikes with muir
derous hand ut human life the other, goaded by
the same passion of disappointment and re-
vcnge, undertakes the overthrow of institu-
tons or destruction of parties. In both alike
there is the insanity of cgosm; an irrcsponsi-
biliy which, if not coveted and deliberately
sought, is the logical result of cultivated and
pampered self love, for which there is neither
palliation nor excuse, and for the destructive
consequences of which there should be no i'm
munity.