The Death of President M’Kinley

The world mourns and nations weep for William M’Kinley, struck down in his prime by the bullet of an assassin: the third President of the United States who has been done to death in like treacherous and cowardly fashion. The hopes we expressed last week that the wound was not likely to prove fatal has, sad to say, not been realised; and at a critical epoch in the history of the nations, a strong and upright man has been untimely removed from the helm of the government of a great people. Thus the feeling of horror expressed on all hands at the news of the perpetration of the dastardly deed is doubly intensified now that its awfully fatal result has become known, and the total inadequacy of the utmost penalty imposed by the law to atone for such a diabolical crime is once again made manifest. Of what value are the lives of the assassin Czolgosz and his instigators or accomplices, compared with the loss to America and to the world of such a man as William M’Kinley. The greatest tribute to the integrity of the late President’s public career and the spotlessness of his private life is to be found in the loud and long lament with which the news of his death has been greeted, the expressed regret being unanimous, except for those small though dangerous sections of society dubbed Anarchists, or extreme socialists. Apart from the execration which will be called down upon the head of the miscreants who institute and carry into effect the plots which make possible such crimes, it is futile to hope that even the murder of President M’Kinley will prove sufficient to check similar outrages in the future. The disease lies deep down, and the country, which, 20 years ago, provided an asylum for the murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr T. J. Burke is in the loss by the assassin’s bullet of three of her Presidents, but reaping the harvest of which she has helped to sow the seed. It is to be hoped that this fresh warning may have its effect, not in extreme retaliatory measures, prompted by the bitterness of revenge, but in cool-headed statesmanlike dealing with the existing defects in the administration of the criminal code throughout the States. It is indeed a deplorable thing, to quote the words of ex-President Grover Cleveland, “that free institutions, and a faithful discharge of duty should be encompassed by danger of assassination.”