The evening light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1881-1883, 1882-06-15
Thursday, June Is. 'S2.
GUITEAU.

presidents aid to test its value. Maucauly re
lates in his paper on Warren Hastings that thu
Indian commissioners, whom the governor
pursued to the executioner's block. were pitt
full, trembling towards till all hope of escape
left them, when they became firm as rock and
dad like martyrs. While there was hope
there was yet drama in which they were &C
tors, when none there waS-doom.
We want Guiteau tried by this test and urge
the president to make known to him, at once,
the hopelessness of his reliance upon the
executive pardon; that is to say, to announce
to the country that he will not interfere. We
ask it in the interest of human science, which
has been so much at fault, throughout this
Guiteau drama.
The thing we seek is proof of our present
convictions as to the real character of the
lence, his defiant, overbearing, british conduct
on all occasions and toward all people, has
arisen from his perfect reliance upon the
presidents interposition, for not only his
safety, but reward.
In heart, he is callous, not capable Of an
emotion but in the interest of self. In
mind, all his reasoning powers move exclu-
sively within the circle of that selishness.
No act could seem to him criminal, none
wrong that served its ends. Hence, crime that
promoted them was not crime to him. 1t was
49,. .-;.,a - l, III prae;dant C,r6al5 Is - caryad
these selfish ends If not so to him, who
committed the deed, fortiari his crime
could not seem crime to Mr.. Arthur, when all
the ends of human Selfshuess were answered
by the act, when it made him president.
There is no method of logic by which the
Guiteau mind could scale that wall. He has
never doubted his pardon and protection at
the hands of him his crime made president.
He has no faculties by which to comprehend
so wide difference between himself and
other men as to admit doubt. But whatever
impelling power, whether this conviction Of
safety and reward, or the deity, or the devil,
or the mere animus of the brute, led him to
commit his monstrous crime will appear only
when all hope is gone, and he is confronted
with his naked doom. That will be when the
president makes itpublicly known that he will
not interfere. There can be much life found
in this theory by retrospective glance at the
case.
Before the assassin committed the deed he
inspected the Jail and inquired as to the prob
ability of his safety from the lynching pro-
cess. When he had shot the President, and
was arrested, he evinced no fear but of the
people and demanded to be hurried to jail
Now Guiteau expected to kill Presiden,
Garfield instantly, and the emergency in his
mind only required his safety till Mr.. Arthur
should be inaugurated President During the
three months of death-bed agony that Presi-
Garfield bore, and subsequently during his ex-
traordinary trial, the wretch expressed no fear
but of being killed by the people, threatened
everyone that offended him with President
Arthur, and, when fired at by Mason, clamor-
ously demanded the soldiers conviction and
punishment. We relate these incidents as
showing that his reliance upon final IMMUNITY
by the interposition of President Arthur never
abandoned him for an instant nor has it until
lately, been in the least degree weak
ened in his mind. His indu lgence
Of his turbulent vagaries in Court, his
effrontery, audacity and defiance in every
presence and on all occasions, were
grounded in his perfect conviction that the
crime was lost in the magnitude of its conse,
quences, and his danger in the magnitude o.
the benefits it conferred on those into whose
keeping it would place him.
But the conviction of his safety through
President Arthur will still furnish hope enough
to keep him moving in the life-drama till the
instant he is strangled, unless it is remorse
ly Topped by an announcement, official OF
semi-official, that the executive will not inter
fere. He has got to prayers, but the hope
underlies all prayers. Every day we yet hea
his utterance that his hope is in the President
Let this hope be tumbled, dead mass int
the chaos of his mind, and the real Guiteal
will emerge. Then the mystery in the extra
ordinary conduct of this extraordinary Grimm
al will be solved. But if the ends of scienc,
are to be thus served President Arthur has ne
time to lose.