New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1881-10-02
AETER LIE RLrRLlL
respected

No spectacle as dramatic ana cXtIaO. binary
as that presented to the world last Monday has
ever occurred in history without conveying
some secret meaning to those who were wise
enough to read it a significant prophetic dis
closure of the course and temper of lis times.
The whole Nation stood with uncovered head
beside its dead it Il universal spontaneous
movement of respect and grief from fifty mill
ions Of people. NOrtherner, SOutherner, party
politicians Of every grade the rich man and
the beggar, stood side by side; the gentle
scholar came out of his study and the rutlan up
from the solitude of the plains to do homage to
this one dead man. For the first time in our
history, too, all other nations joined heartily in
sympathy with our grief: the tOlling bell above
his open grave was heard around the world.
Now why was this Other Presidents,
honest and faithful in their day, have died
while in Office, and been buried with moderate
manifestations of sorrow even for murdered
Lincoln there was no such universal outpouring
of grief as this. Neither, when James Garfield
died could it be said that we had lost the fore
most American of his time men of more daz-
cling fame and brilliant achievement, Of finer
intellectual gifts and profounder learning,
were left behind him. What did it mean, then
Simply that an honest man, called unexpect-
edly to rule, had set his face with inhcxible
resolution to put down, as far as in him lay, the
corruption which is eating the life ont Of the
Nation, and had fallen before the accomplish
mcnt of that heroic endeavOr. 1t was no great
act of military strategy in Garfield the soldier,
no intellectual triumph of the eX-prcacher and
schoolmaster, no startling stroke Of statesman
ship in the President, that the whole world
paused to honor. 1t was the truth, the grit the
dauntess courage and staying power with
which he confronted, first his duty and then the
slow torture and death which followed. No matter
what his political opinions, every man in Amer
lea on last Monday was forced to recognize 1.-The
honesty and courage of the hero who lay dead
at Cleveland. Every man in America knows
to-day, too, that it requires no superhuman
powers OF intellect, no chance on the battlefield
or in Congress, to make himself as true a hero
as Garfield; but only the same brave, stubborn
adherence to truth and honesty, wherever he
may be. in politics as III his daily life.
The same corruption is Just as alive and viru-
lent as it was when James Garfield first took
his stand against it, or when he was shot down
on that July day; the Bosses are as powerful,
their machinery as perfect, the Oiicc-seckers as
hungry and clamorous. There is the same ten
dcncy in all our political structure, from the
pretenders to the Cabinet down to the Office
holders of a village, to make sef-aggrandlze-
ment and greed the object of ali political move
ments, instead of the welfare of the people
The Guiteaus and the class of whom Guiteau is
the feeblest type are not in prison or dead, not
withstanding their preJernatural silence of the
last month. 0lice-seekIng, fraud and greed are