Guiteau Not a "Child of Liberty."

"The Guiteau Generation" is the title of a recent discourse by Dr. C. A. Bartol.  The printed report is now before us, but a few sentences come readily to our lips, and furnish the suggestion of what we would here say, "Guiteau is our production, a child of Liberty." This is an assumption, based on the fact that he was born in this country and raised under "our institutions." Waiving a moment the rather important question whether "our institutions" do, in any real and effectual way, solve the problem of Liberty; or admitting, for the sake of argument, that "our institutions" and Liberty are in all respects synonymous, — does it, as a consequence, follow that Guiteau is a "child of Liberty." Liberty, if it exists in America inherits the material on which it is at work. The appearance of a man like Guiteau in America has inherited as to what it is in and of itself. Put into one word, what is that inheritance? No one can doubt. It is Force. And Guiteau is a child of Force, Dr. Bartol, not of Liberty. Children, sir, are supposed to resemble and reproduce the character of their parents. They are, in a familiar phrase, "chips of the old block." In what way can Liberty be said to be the sire of Garfield's assassin? In this way only, — the way in which you have said it, — that he was self-prompted to the deed. But that certainly is a most unjust way accusing Liberty. Do you in the same breath call men as Napoleon, Cromwell, the czars of Russia children of Liberty? They were "self-prompted" men. And if to be thus self-moved constitutes a man an heir of Liberty, either of the tyrants named could claim the inheritance by a title more indisputable than Guiteau's. But, of course, Dr. Bartol is ready with the qualifications that one must be moved by a self in harmony with the law of Liberty in order to be Liberty's child. Very well, was Guiteau so moved? Ah, sir! had it been so, Garfield would have been living to-day. Liberty does not invade the right of life in any man. Liberty is without weapons of offense. Her devotees are bound hand and foot in her only law, which hold the Liberty of others as sacred as their own. To kill another is not to set forth the nature of Liberty. The slayer is not Liberty's champion, but Tyranny's. It is the resource of despotism, the triumph of Force.

Therefore do we affirm that Guiteau is no child of Liberty, though he is, as we now insist, a child of "our institution," in so far as they rely, not upon voluntary support, but upon Force. Guiteau wished Garfield dead, and he compelled his death. Dead, he desired him, or made over to his idea of what he should be. He would have him dead as he was, and, if he had seen the way to have him so die and yet live among men, we doubt not he would have kept the money that purchased the pistol in his pocket. But he had no such idea. He had the common, prevailing idea, — the idea of the supremacy of Force. He was the child of what you Dr. Bartol, you and the majority of your countrymen,exalt, Law forced — "en-forced," you put it.

And that, sir, is what America has inherited; not what she has invented. No matter about our Forth of July craze; we still live, not on our own genius for Liberty, but on our borrowed capital, — namely, the organization of despotism, whose weapon is Guiteau's pistol.

Is it not so?