Assassination and the Spoils System [pp. 145-170]

ASSASSINATION AND THE SPOILS SYSTEM.
CIVILIZATION has its stages at which the taking of the
life of a ruler is held a justifiable remedy in politics.
Tyrannicide was defended in Greece. The bloody work of
Brutus and Cassius was not generally condemned except by the
adherents of Cesar. A man might defend his country as he
might his own life, by taking that of its enemy. The fearful
experience of half the nations of Europe in our own time discloses great elements of population ready to justify the savage
remedy of the assassin when passions are up or a sense of wrong
maddens the people. Those we call lunatics are often little
more than ill-balanced intellects, reasoning and deciding rather
according to the standards of earlier times and a lower civilization than our own; yet with so mnch justice and logic that,
while doubting their responsibility, we recognize their acts
as ominous indications. In whatever walk of life insanity
increases, we expect to find great wrongs or gross violations of
morality.
The tenure of Amadeus and Louis Napoleon were never
seen to be so precarious as in the light flashed from the deadly
missiles of assassins. No proof of the dangerous forces restraihed
by Russian despotism has so convinced the world as the martyr
spirit shown by the half-crazed assassins who have made light of
their own lives in order to take that of the emperor. History
and oratory can present no argument so convincing of the perils
of national injustice, long continued, as is afforded by the murderous frenzy of Irishmen. When stormy and vindictive passions sweep with such fury through a nation that impetuous
abnormal natures are driven over the lines of reason to deeds of
violence and blood-as the weaker plates of a boiler are the first
to yield to the pressure which bears alike upon all-we are wise
in believing the political fabric can bear no more strain, and that
IO