Tue news of the death of President Garfield which reached us on Wednesday through Reuter's Agency gave an unexpected and terrible blow to the hopes which had been raised last week when we were told that he had been removed from Washington to Long Branch, It would now appear that his removal, in liew of being an evidence of his convalescence, was an act adopted by his medical advisers as giving him a Inst chance of recovery from a condition little short of hope-lose. It is now nearly three mouths since the act of a vile assassin, for which Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords could find no better word than detestable, Inid low one of the most estimable mon and upright politicians who have ever occupied the high dignity of the Presidential chair; not excepting his predecessor ina like fate, Lincoln, and the great Washington himself, Until the moment of Guitenu's murderous attack the whole country was congratulating itself upon the accession of a President who would inaugurate a new ora of administrative reform which should stamp out the results of that pernicious doctrine Which for the last fifty yeara has been almost accepted as an axiom in American polities—"To the victors belong the spoils." President. Garfield was a self-made man who had: risen by his own energies and had achieved not only n mere worldly success, but in addition a reputation for spotless in. tegrity us well as the ornament and advantages of literary culti To this he added that which the majority of mon aviting such acquirements often lack, namely, the every, the determina. tion, and, at last, the opportunity to carry into practice the ideal conceived in private study. Washington was a soldier and administrator, Lincola a man of strong and honest purpose with little culture; but in General Garfield the United States had at length found a head, representative of all the qualities fostered by an active life amidst the grentost assemblage of free mon that the world has yet witnessed. His election was unexpected; and the country scarcely awoke to the fact that a great man, in every senso of the the word, had been elected, until called upon to mourn his loss. Woe will not dwell on the painful sufferings of the late President, so boldly and mantally borne, on the cruel affliction wrought upon the surviving members of his family, upon the grief into which his country, and we may add the whole used world, has been thrown, nor upon the heartlessness of a wretch who to serve his own miserable ends or to revenge his own fancied wrong should have dared to inflict such a cruel blow on an innocent and defenceless fellow-mav. The destroyers of Alexander LI may have been hounded on by witnessing the miseries and torture of their friends under an irresponsible despotism, But a man like Gaiteau had no such shadow of an excuse: such men, fortunately rare, are hostes humani genesis, and if there is one spark of consolation in the sad news, it is in the assurance that such a miscreant will no longer be allowed to live. Had the President recovered, a too humanitarian age would no doubt have spared him from the fate he 60 richly deserved.
It is snd to reflect on the probable confusion in American politics that the deed of this obscure assassin may achieve. By one of those compromises, frequently resorted to in sel governing countries, the union of the vote of the Republican Party was only accomplished by the nomination of two candidates for the Presidency and Vi presidency, representing tho two div' sions into which this Party is now split. General Garfield was chosen as the representative of the faction hended by Mr. Blaine, and Mr. Arthur as the nominee of the Conkling faction, or 'Stalwarts.' This union was only accomplished in the face of a powerful Democratic enemy, in the candidatare of General Hancock, and the branch, never healed, broke out with all the virulence of party hatred immediately upon the inauguration of the new President last March. The subsequent appointment by the President under the influence of Mr. Blaine of Mr.
Robertson tothe Collectorshipof the New York Customs brought the prench to a head, and a lost acrimonious controvoray, resulting in the resignation of Mr. Conkling from his office of Senator of the State of New York, has been going on ever since, quieted bat not arrested by the President's assassination. The nomination to this post was regarded by Mr. Conkling as the prescriptive right of the State Senators, and President. Gnrfield, in disregarding this precedent and appointing a man plainly upon the strength of his qualifications for the post, has thrown the army of placeholders and placchuntera into an uproar hardly conceivable by those who are not acquainted with the virulence ith which party strife is carried on in the Grent Republic. Hud President Garfield lived, the excitement would doubtless have quieted down in time, and be would have had leisure to pursue the difficult path of reform which President Hayes seems to have shrunk from in despair. Bat now, Mr. Arthur the nominee of the "Stalwarts' becomes President, and a repetition of the struggles that graced the administration of President Johnson, who, under like circumstances slipped into Mr. Linculu's place, seems unfortunately not. improbable, The universal sympathy evoked when the nows of the assassination wns flashed almost to every corner of the civilised world, and more especially in Great Britain, is a pleasing feature in what in all other respects is a most terrible catastrophe. Never before, not even on the occasion of the still more dramatic murder of President Lincoln was evidenced the real solidarity of the two peoples and the closeness of the bonds that unite them, All nations are now bound together by the electric spark; but more especially is the English-speaking race, spread over the four quarters of the globe, thrilled with a common shock by a calamity affecting any one member of it, As was well said by the London Standard, a Conservative organ and hence not to be suspected of flattering Democracy, at the time, "Tu presence of such an outrage as that of which Washington was the scene on Saturday, England and the United States are as one people. The indignation, the sympathy, the emotions of hope and fear have been as strong and vivid on this side of the Atlantic as on that; and when, toward the close of yesterday afternoon, the cable flushed the news that a change for the better had taken place and that some hopes were entertained that the President's life would be saved, the feeling of thankfulness was as hearty and sincere as it was universal, from the Queen herself down to her humblest subject." These we venture to say express the feelings of our small po! glor community; and if an additional expression of sytupathy from this distant spot can in any way console the grief of his stricken relatives, let us convey one. It would be a graceful tribute to the universal admiration in which was held that nature's nobleman whom it has pleased God to recall while on the threshold of a career of usefulness to his country and to humanity.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.