The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-12-06
He Recommends Many Reforms but
Urges Conservatism in Bring
ing Them About.
THE DOCUMENT UNIQUE
IN MANY PARTICULARS

estly anxious to represent the well
thought-out wishes of the people; his
one anxiety in every crisis was to keep
in closest touch with the people-to
find out what they thought and to en-
deavor to give expression to their
thought, after endeavoring to guide that
thought Alright. He had just been re-
elected to the presidency because the
majority of our citizens, the majority
of our farmers and wage-workerS, be-
lieved that he had faithfully upheld
their interests for four years. They
felt themselves in close and intimate
touch with him. They felt that he rep
their ideals and aspirations that they
wished him to continue for another
four years to represent them.
And this was the man at whom the
assassin struck! That there might be
nothing lacking to complete the Judas
like infamy of his act, he took advant-
age of an occasion when the president
was meeting the people generally; and
advancing as if to take the hand out
stretched to him in kindly and broth
erly fellowship, he turned the noble and
generous confidence of the victim into
an opportunity to strike the fatal blow.
There is no baser deed in all the annals
of crime.
The shock, the grief of the country,
are bitter in the minds of all who saw
the dark days, while the president yet
hovered between life and death. At
last the light was stilled in the kindly
eyes and the breath went from the lips
that even in mortal agony uttered no
words save of forgiveness to his mur-
derer of love for his friends, and of un-
faltering trust in the will Of the Most
High. Such a death, crowning the glory
of such a life. leaves us with infinite
sorrow, but with such pride in what he
had accomplished and in his own per-
sonal character, that we feel the blow
not as struck at him, but as struck at
the nation. We mourn good and great
president who is dead; but while we
mourn we are lifted up by the splendid
achievements of his life and the grand
heroism with which he met his death.
"A Blow against the Nation
When we turn from the man to the
nation, the harm done is so great as to
excite our gravest apprehensions and
to demand our wisest and most resolute
action. This criminal was a professed
anarchist. inf1amed by the teachings
of professed anarchists, and probably
also by the reckless utterances Of those
who. on the stump and in the public
press, appeal to the dark and evil
spirits of malice and greed, envy and
sullen hatred. The wind is sowed by
the men who preach such doctrines, and
they cannot escape their share of re-
sponsibility for the whirlwind that is
reaped This applies alike to the delib-
crate demagogue, to the exploiter of
sensationalism, and to the crude and
foolish visionary who, for whatever
aimless discomfort.
The blow was aimed not at this presi-
dent, but at all president; at every
symbol of government President Nc
Kinley was as emphatically the en-
bodiment of the popular win of the ma
tion expressed through the forms OF
law as a New England town meeting
is in similar fashion the embodiment of
the law-abiding purpose and practice
of the people Of the town. On no con-
ceivable theory could the murder Of the
president be accepted as due to protest
against inequalities in the social or
der" save is the murder of all the free
men engaged in a town meeting could
be accepted as a protest against that
social inequality which puts a milefac-
tor in Jail. Anarchy is no more an ex-
preston of social discomfort" than
picking pockets or wife-beating.
Anarchists and Their Abettors
The anarchist, and especially the an
archist in the United States, is merely
one type Of criminal, more dangerous
than any other because he represents
the same depravity in a greater degree.
The man who advocates anarchy di-
rectly or indirectly, in any shape or
fashion. or the man who apologies for
anarchists and their deeds, makes him
self morally accessory to murder be-
fore the fact The anarchist is a GRIM
inal whose perverted instincts lead him
to prefer confusion and chaos to the
most beneficent form of social order.
His protest of concern for workingmen
is outrageous in its impudent falsity:
for if the political institutions OF this