The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1894-06-26

Inc young Italian anarchist, Cesare
SGnto. who on Sunday night stabbed to
death the most inoffsnsive and conser
vative executive official that the French
republic has ever had. should of course
pay for his crime with the forfeit of
his own worthless life. He was un-
doubtedly insane, at the moment, II
not permanently. Only diseased
mind, originating from q perverted
conscience fed from incendiary and
vitiated sources, could have conceived.
planned and prompted the execution Of
a crime so utterly opposed to reason
and common sense, not to speak Of or.
dinary humanity. But insane or not,
his own life has been forfeited. 1t no
longer has value to society. Like the
life Of the vicious wild beast, it must
be sacrificed to insure the public safety (;
and the lives OF those who helped TO
plot the assassination. If such there
were. should also be stamped out.
Uron human beings thus corrupted to
the point OF homicidal madness reason,
conciliation, education, mercy even is
wasted. They are as the viper, to be
crushed at sight. Leniency in the
slightest degree becomes injustice, for
it simply encourages murder and makes
possible the other great tragedies that
spread contagion among other men
similarly depraved
Yet it is not to be credited for an in.
stant that the belrdless boy who killed
President Carnot is the greatest crimi-
nal connected with the lamantab!a in
cident. While he gets and deserves no
sympathy, it is not to bis door that we
dare bring the prime burden of re-
spcnsibility. There must be influences
back Of him that work more potsntly
and moro broadly than could any de-
lirious fancies originating wholly
within his own excitable Consciousness.
Gas there not to be charged up to the
day dream called socialism o great
share Of blame for this awful deed?
Socialism is sciences fantasy; it 10 the
deceptive recreation that mon take
who work hard with brain or Drawn in
stern practical fields and resort to it
as the wsared toiler of the east resorts
TO his,opium pipe or his hasheesh. Ths
deluded Bouls who fondle this pretty
dream until it becomes in their mind
an easy possibility, forget utterly that
since the world began the came illu-
sion has drawn the wisest OF men into
hopeless bogs. They dream Of social
ism, first purely for sake OF pastime
but soon they become to think and
plan and work for its realization. Then
it is that the influences are started
which breed populistic discomfort,
cause ferment among the vicious and
the unfortunate, and finally culminato
in the awful spasms called Nihilism
and anarchy.
Without doubt the shoekingttragedy
at Lyons is one of the many prices
which Ooeiety is paying for the gradual
solution Of one of it's most difficult
problems. Within the past fifty years
the whole field Of human industry has
been revolutioniEed. From q social
condition essentially Of men as indi-
viduals, working together harmoni.
ously in the relationship of employe to
employer, We have passed with sur
prising celebrity to condition of great
centralized influences drawn up against
each other in battle array, with individ.
ualism, particularly in Europe, all but
crushed out. Such a transformation
was not to be achieved without its
bloodshed and it's crimes. We are not
yet at the end Of the evolution. The
wisest observers differ in their esti-
mates as to how it will come out. But
1t is to be remembered that the dagger
OF the assassin never yet aided the
cause in which 1t was uplifted. HUI
manity is on the side of the masses and
OK the man as against the classes and
the impersonal agencies that rob man
of his personal identity. But human
ity has stronger influences at its COM
mand than the pistol and the dirk.
All the murderers in Christendom
could not bring about the realization
OF the elysium which socialism pic
lures before the Imagination of minds
disordered. II it is ever to be approx
mated 1t will have to be along lines of
personal culture and pacific evolution.
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