Pity, But Not Praise.

Under ordinary circumstances a man's dying hours are no time to recall his errors. But the extravagant language used by the press and people, especially the Democratic press and people, in connection with President Garfield's present danger, may excuse now what otherwise would be out of place. As to the act committed by Guiteau all sensible men agree. Nothing but its insanity saves it from being dastardly, bloodthirsty, and thoroughly devilish, without reason, proper motive, or excuse. No man regrets is more than we do, and no one would condemn it more strongly than we, had it been the work of a responsible mind. For the Guiteau style of assassination we have no apology. But how about the victim? Does the fact that a man has been shot change his moral character? One year ago four-fifths of Democrats and no small percentage of Republicans (journals and citizens alike) believe Garfield to be a bribed man and a perjurer, and publicly branded him as such. Now nearly all who made those charges vie with the most ardent of his admirers in ascribing to him all the virtues in the calender raised to their highest power. What has happened within twelve months to alter General Garfield's moral status? A few more people have voted for him for the office than voted for his competitor, and he has been shot by a crazy man. Will any one soberly maintain that these facts are sufficient, not only to erase the the memory of crime, but to lift the man guilty of it to a moral height rarely reached by the most stainless of his fellows? For ourselves we believed the gravest of the charges against the president from the first, and the fact that we sincerely hope for his recovery does not lighten the weight of the evidence that supported them; though we would not reassert them now, did not others retract them without reason.

And why this universal lamentation? The death of General Garfield before his nomination for the presidency would have caused no greater agitation of the nation's heart than would the death of Senator Edmunds or Senator Davis to-day. And yet whatever gratitude he is entitled to from his countrymen he earned before that event. The fact is that people do not mourn for the man. A spirit of flunkyism still pervades the masses, and only the insignia of office call forth this inordinate sorrow and extravagant expression of grief. Let there be sympathy for the sufferer; let the desire for his recovery be that which every person with a heart would naturally feel; but let there be no bowing before his official station merely for its sake, and, above all, let none who have bitterly denounced him in the past condemn, by eulogy to-day, their previous utterances as insincere and their utterances of the future as unworthy of the slightest confidence.