The Northern Guardian. — 1894-06-28 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

THE MURDERF.D PRESIDENT.  ON Sunday morning England welcomed a new-born Prince with acclamations. Loyalty is sincerer than pessimists believe, and there is an almost universal faith in our limited monarchy as the best form of government. Before the joy bells were silent a dastardly outrage had been committed in a city that once had a ghastly notoriety as the scene of the crowning horrors of the French Revolution. Among the thousands whose lives were once forfeit to an enraged populace in Lyons there was no more blameless victim than the man who was stabbed to death in a fashion more suggestive of the Middle Ages than of our boasted advanced civilisation. President Carnot was undoubtedly the ablest and most popular of the Presidents of the French Republic. That he should have shared the cruel fate of Lincoln and of Garfield is a European misfortune, and not merely another blot upon the soiled scutcheon of French history. The assassin was at least not a compatriot of his victim. Otherwise the murder of Carnot has a remarkable historical parallel in that of Henry IV. by Ravaillac. The unfortunate President was stabbed in his carriage, among his friends, by a man who dashed forward as if to present a petition. The miscreant Santo would appear to have studied French history and made his hideous deed a faithful replica of that of Ravaillac. Truly the words of Malherbe, an eye-witness of the death of the beloved hero of Ivry, apply with singular appositeness to the attitude of France at this moment—" As for the people of Paris, they never wept so much as on this occasion." The list of kings who have died by means of foul play is a long one. By many it is believed that William Rufus met his doom in the New Forest by no mere accident. Miserable Edward the Second was murdered in Berkeley Castle. Richard the Second "disappeared." Poison played a formidable part in France and Italy. Ambition, love, hatred, misplaced enthusiasm, have again and again darkened European annals with deeds of horror. Yet even when the Nihilists succeeded in taking the life of the late Czar of Russia, they had a strong defence to inake for their desperate course. Oppression, extortion, slavery, made these men reckless, and there were those who could not refrain from sympathy with men and women whose burning tale of wrong came an exceeding bitter cry from far Siberia. But that Sadi Carnot, the elect of the people, the servant of that free France that has arisen from the ashes of flaming Paris, torn by the dissensions of the Commune and weakened by signal defeat, should hive shared the fate of an unpopular king is strange indeed. Grandson of the famous Carnot, who bore the glorious sobriquet of "Organiser of Victory," President Carnot brought the glamour of the  name of a special champion of the people back to remembrance in his own very popular personality. He was full of energy and enterprise, and, though a man of peace, was quite conscious of the importance of the Army to the safety of France. President Grevy was but a nonentity, but Carnot, in the six and a half years he he d the reins of Government, stamped the impress of a strong character upon the country he ruled wisely and well. His labours in the cause of commerce were unremitting, and will bear permanent fruit. France is unfortunate indeed. To have her most able administrator torn from her by the knife of an alien assassin is an overwhelming calamity. The entire story reads like the description of a melodrama. The gaily illuminated city, with its joyous crowds of pleasure-seekers. The theatre thronged with spectators waiting to welcome the 'man who was lying mortally ' wounded. The passionate Southern thirst for revenge that possessed the people, only a few moments before so absorbed in their own enjoyment. To be a king in these disjointed times is to occupy a post of danger. Crowned heads lie more than over uneasily, and thrones are shaken to their foundations by the bomb of the dynamitard. But it is a new and melancholy discovery that the life of a President of a free Republic is just as much in jeopardy. There must be something very rutteu in the state of a society that is forced to contemplate such ooutrages as these. The outlook is not a cheering one, and the need of "a still, strong man " to take the head of aflltirs hi France will be sorely felt.