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[untitled]
Sober men will reflect upon the tragedy
of the past week with conflicting emotions. The attempted murder
of President McKinley they will recognize as an outrage upon the
republic itself. He is its regularly chosen chief servant. In that
office he personifies its laws and its liberty. A murderous blow,
therefore, directed at him in this capacity cannot but be keenly
felt by all of us who, believing in liberty secured by law, love
the free institutions of our country and have faith in the triumph
of its ideals. Mr. McKinley, together with his family and immediate
friends, should have and will have universal sympathy. For the crime
that brought him to the open door of another world no palliation
is possible; and for the criminal the most charitable thought is
that he may have been irresponsibly mad. But upon these thoughts,
with all the sad and bitter emotions they arouse, other thoughts
obtrude. In the lawless spirit which this crime has excited, sober-minded
men will see more to deplore and more for the republic to fear,
even than in the crime itself.
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When the assassin’s shots were fired
and President McKinley fell, the spectators and the great crowds
surrounding them became a revengeful mob. It was not unnatural.
The first impulse of most men who witness the perpetration of a
crime they abhor is to tear the criminal to pieces, just as it is
the first impulse of women to weep. Neither was it unnatural in
the futile detective, set as a guard for the president, to strike
the assassin in the face, though the blow came too late to stop
the murderous assault. Uncontrollable anger at being frustrated
in the object of his employment would be enough to account for him.
Even the powerful Negro who seized the frail assassin after the
shot, and would have mangled him to death but for police interference,
is not to be condemned for the savage act. His lawless impulse may
be attributed to the unwonted and overpowering excitement of the
moment. Things like these are within the category of panic, and
panic knows no law. But they are temporary outbursts, which, as
a rule, speedily give way to better emotions.
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These manifestations need give no
one concern for the future of the republic. Not so, however, with
much that has happened since. Christian preachers have intimated
that they would welcome lynch law. Reputable citizens have coolly
urged criminal acts against prisoners charged with crime and argue
that our institutions allow too much liberty. One distinguished
senator has given an interview to the press saturated with the spirit
of lawlessness, and other public men have imitated him. Enactments
of laws modeled after the infamous alien and sedition laws of a
century ago are deliberately advised. The newspapers, instead of
trying to calm popular excitement, to hold possible mobs in check,
to foster a law-abiding and orderly public spirit, have, with a
few honorable exceptions, endeavored to fan every spark of popular
indignation into a flame of lawlessness. Instead of demanding that
all the safeguards with which the law defends liberty and shields
innocence be observed, they applaud the police and spur them on
when in a futile search for mythical accomplices of the assassin
the police contemptuously ignore these safeguards. The police have
made domiciliary visits; they have seized persons and papers without
warrant; they have subjected prisoners to secret cross-examination
after the manner of “courts of first instance” in continental Europe,
but without the protection which those courts throw around the innocent.
Beyond this official lawlessness, cabinet officers and congressmen,
forgetful of the historic motives for limiting treason to making
war upon the republic, are gravely proposing to include assaults
upon the president among acts of treason; and even the cabinet is
reported to have agreed upon measures to be pressed upon congress,
which, if enacted, would dangerously augment the central power.
For those reactionary measures also the press is raising a hue and
cry. These are things which make one wonder if popular fears may
indeed be played upon to the extent of causing the American people
to throw away what has been gained for freedom during centuries
of heroic struggle.
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If this un-American behavior were
but an impulsive expression of true patriotic sentiment, if it were
only a temporarily distorted manifestation of affection for the
spirit of liberty under law that we have been trying for more than
a century to foster in this country, then it might be encouraging.
In that case, abhorrent as it would still be to all sanely patriotic
minds, we should know that the old affection for the American ideals
is still alive, even though for the moment they are discarded. But
no such interpretation is possible. The best possible interpretation
is that it is inspired directly or indirectly by personal or partisan
affection for Mr. McKinley as an individual. Lower mo- [353][354]
tives intermingle. That is the best one. We shall study in vain
such manifestations of excitement as have occurred and such preventive
and punitive legislation as has been proposed, to find even a sickly
germ of affection for the democratic institutions of our republic.
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There is in all this something peculiarly
sad to Americans who, descended from revolutionary patriots, have
inherited the democratic spirit of the revolution. They do not regard
this republic as perfect. But they do regard it as the beginning
of what has every possibility of becoming as perfect a republic
as man is capable of developing. It is with no lightness of heart,
therefore, that they reflect upon attempts on the one hand at assassinating
their chief public servant, and observe upon the other a foreboding
tendency to stamp out such crimes by turning the republic into a
despotism. They cannot view with satisfaction the disposition to
wreak ignoble vengeance upon the assassin, rather than subject him
with dignity to the processes and penalties of regularly administered
law; they cannot remain silent while policemen display contempt
for laws they are appointed to execute, especially when the public
tolerates this most dangerous species of anarchy; they cannot but
deplore the apparent willingness of a large class of their fellow
citizens to discard the safeguards of liberty for which their fathers
fought. If it be true, as some say, that foreigners who have not
learned our theory of government take advantage of its exceptional
freedom to plot assassination, it is also true that Americans who
have forgotten our theory of government are urging us on, not vainly
either, to the acceptance of European models which our fathers cast
away.
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Let us not be deceived to the undoing
of our republic, by appeals to rabid emotion. Let us consider the
situation with sane minds. The question which the attempt upon President
McKinley’s life should bring home to everyone is not how to protect
presidents’ lives especially, but how to protect human life. It
is human life, not the lives of public men merely, that we of this
country hold sacred. “How can we make life inviolate?” asked Rev.
Herbert S. Bigelow, at a labor meeting in New York last Saturday,
alluding to the assault upon Mr. McKinley. His own answer to this
incisive question was: “By cultivating in the community a sense
of the sacredness of life, not only in the white house, but also
in the mines and mills.” One voice interrupted him with a cry of
“Shame!” That must have been the voice either of a destructive anarchist
or a monarchist. Destructive anarchists might object to Mr. Bigelow’s
sentiment, because respect for all human life would be a deterrent
to the assassination of rulers; monarchists might object because
in their estimation workers in mines and mills are men of inferior
blood. But clearly the only guarantee of safety to public servants
is, as Mr. Bigelow said, universal recognition of the sanctity of
all human life, the lives of the humble as well as the lives of
the great. So long as human life in mine and mill, in tenement and
slum, is cheaply held, to the end that a privileged few may revel
in luxuries they do not produce, so long will victims of this injustice
breed insane lusts for revengeful murder. But more than that and
beyond that. So long as war is advocated by men in high places as
a desirable mode of discipline for a strenuous national life, and
the masses of men are looked upon as food providentially provided
for powder, so long will conspicuous characters be shining marks
for the assassin. In a moral atmosphere, redolent of blood and foul
with the miasma of death, the unbalanced minds of strenuous lunatics
naturally foster a passion for the blood of rulers. The only preventive
of tragedies such as that at Buffalo is the one which Mr. Bigelow
recommends. Instead of cultivating a privileged leisure class at
the expense of a working class plundered to the door of death, instead
of cultivating a national strenuous life at the expense of a grim
procession of individual lives marching through pools of blood to
kill and be killed—instead of these violations of all that is holy
in our religions and all that is truly noble in our national ideals,
let us take Mr. Bigelow’s advice and cultivate in the community
a sense of the sacredness of all human life.
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Yet there was more involved in this
attempted assassination than the taking of an individual life from
individual malice. Mr. McKinley was shot because he was president,
by a man who had conceived the possibility of thereby assailing
the republic. For that reason the assault becomes a matter of political
concern to everyone who believes in our republican institutions.
It is in this sense that the murderous assault upon Mr. McKinley
is a public calamity. Not because he is a better president than
we have ever had. That isn’t true. Not because he is an exceptionally
good man. There are many men as good as he. Not because the place
he holds cannot be filled by another. It can be and will be over
and over again. These are not the reasons. What makes the assault
a public calamity, and all that can make it so, except as every
murder is a public calamity, is the fact that it is in the nature
of an attack upon republican government.
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But such attacks cannot be guarded
against. Neither can they in themselves menace the republic. Assassinations
of public servants from political motives can no more overturn a
government of the people than assassination of private citizens
from private malice can. Both are to be deplored. Both kinds of
assassins, together with their abettors, must be punished. But no
more in the one case than in the other can arbitrary measures for
their prevention be even partially effectual without producing [354][355]
greater evils than they are designed to cure. If we are to have
Russian security for our officials, we must establish Russian absolutism.
Even then the assassin will now and again accomplish his end. Simplicity
of life and confidence in the public are better armor for American
officials against assassination than Russian methods. It is true
that Lincoln trusted to these and was murdered. But that was at
a time of fierce passions, when even a Russian bodyguard might not
have saved him. It is true also that Garfield trusted himself in
like manner. But he was killed by a maniac. Harrison was absolutely
confiding, surrounding himself with no guard, traveling as unostentatiously
as a private citizen, declaring that no one would hurt him but a
madman, and that no possible precaution could avert that danger,
and not a hand was raised against him. But President McKinley, protected
by a double line of soldiers forming a lane through which the people
passed to greet him, and guarded by two secret service officers
close at hand, falls a victim to an assassin’s pistol. What else
can be done but lawfully to punish the offender and his accessories,
if by lawful means it can be proved that he had accessories? Nothing
more, unless we follow the dangerous advice of evil counselors and
imitate the autocratic example of Germany and Russia.
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Just here is the greatest menace
of destructive anarchy. It is the danger that the popular fears
it excites may cause the people to tolerate what is nominally for
“the suppression of anarchy,” but which in fact, be it so intended
or not, will abolish traditional safeguards of liberty and open
the way to that imperialistic era at home which our crown colony
venture abroad has foreshadowed. Even now it is reported from Washington
that Attorney General Knox is preparing a bill to be recommended
to congress next winter, and of course pushed through if possible,
making conspiracies against a president, wherever committed, triable
and punishable by the federal courts. The distinguished correspondent,
Mr. Wellman, who tells his paper about this measure, describes it
as one that—
will not be a statute of lese majesty, but it will be the republican
counterpart thereof, in so far as our constitution and form
of government will permit.
This is but an indication of the assaults upon the underlying principles
of our government that will be quickly made if popular fears of
anarchists can be effectually played upon.
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It ought to be evident to well-balanced
men that the schemes proposed for “crushing anarchy” cannot crush
what those who propose these schemes profess to fear. Nothing in
the way of penalties can prevent one man from killing another, if
he determines to do it and is willing to die himself. Such a man
cannot be intimidated by penalties. Nor can anything restrain madmen.
All that laws for the “suppression” of anarchy can accomplish is
to interfere with the legitimate activities of persons who are not
assassins, and have nothing in common with them.
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It would be both misleading and unjust
to close this discussion without a word for the brighter side. The
question before us fortunately does not present a choice between
one kind of anarchy threatening the lives of public servants and
a second kind of anarchy threatening the liberties of the republic.
There is another and hopeful alternative. A wholesome sentiment
is plainly observable which appears to be gaining headway. If some
preachers have made advances toward lynch law, others stand firmly
for liberty and order. If some prominent citizens would make the
calamity the opportunity for a stride backward toward the despotism
from which we have emerged, others with clearer vision and steadier
purpose warn us gravely and wisely to maintain our institutions
and preserve our liberties. If some newspapers riotously raise a
hue and cry, inflaming public passion and disturbing orderly procedure,
there are others that strike a different and more cheering note.
In the latter category, in Chicago alone, there are three at least—two
of them Republican and one Democratic—the Evening Post, the Record-Herald
and the Chronicle. As an illustration of this better spirit, here
is an extract from an editorial in the Post of the 11th:
Every enlightened citizen should
urge, above al [sic] things, scrupulous obedience to
the law on the part of its official guardians. There should
be no manufacturing of evidence, no straining of statutes, no
violation of the letter or spirit of the fundamental principles
of American justice, American liberty and American jurisprudence.
Let our practice conform to our preaching. Hysteria and intemperance
of speech on the part of public men lead to disregard by the
authorities of the very safeguards which protect our form of
government from violence and successful attack. We must do justice
justly, and beware of committing the folly of combating lawlessness
in a lawless way.
So long as there is even a minority sentiment so sound, so sane,
so reasonable as that, a sentiment so keenly sensitive to the vital
principles of American polity, we need have no more than a passing
fear of anarchy of any kind—be it the destructive form of anarchy
that would assassinate public servants, or the worse form of anarchy
that would assassinate public liberty.
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