Wuew we write "The Death of the President," it is really unnecessary to add the name of Major William McKinley, for though there are many Presidents, to all English-speaking people the President is the President of the Unired States of America. It was the President, too, that the miscreant Czolgorz so no suspicion that he had any personal treacherously assassinated; there is
grudge against Major McKinley. He whom we mourned yesterday with every flag - half-masted was every inch a President; among the seventy millions or more of American citizens it would be difficult to pick out a man better fitted in all respects to be the freely-chosen ruler of a great free people.
Major McKinley had an ideal training for the post of President. Born in 1843 in the State of Ohio, which was not long ago a Western State but is now the centre of the Union by population, he was educated at Allegheay College, and at the age of eighteen took his share in fighting for the preservation of the Union, by enlisting as a private in the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He served all through the war, reaching the rauk of Captain in 1864, and being brevetted Major in the U. S. Volunteers for gallantry in battle by President Lincoln only a month before the latter was assassinated. Mustered out of the service in July 1865, Major MeKinley a once entered on the study of the law, and began practice at Canton, Ohio, where he afterwards he entered public lit: as
he was elected to the House of Representatives at Washington, and retained his seat for fourteen years, it being his duty in 1890, as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, to bring in the Protectionist tariff which accentuated to the world the reputation he had already achieved in Congress. In 1891 he was elected Governor of Ohio and re-elected in 1893. In 1896 he was elected President of the United States and re-elected last year, If McKinley's name will not go down to history as that of a great President, he will certainly be classed as one of the best. In representative governments conducted on party lines there is ordinarily no place for 'a man of great originality and independence. Such a man, if he is also a great orator, may force himself to the front, bnt he is always a danger to his party, and his disappearance sometimes wrecks it, as Mr, Gladstone's death wrecked the Liberal ty in England, Major MeKinley wasa cultivated gentleman, a good speaker, able, affable, and of the highest integrity, persona and political, sympathetic, of unblemished character, fond of his home, and devoted to his country, as was shown by his career in the Civil War. While not, apparently, a man originality, he had a' remarkable aptitude for ascertaining the direction of the current of popular thought and desire, so that when he seemed to be leading, he had first ascertained the way which the people wanted to take. He realised, too, that under the party system the man who wishes to obtain office must consult the wishes of the party managers, even when they do not accord entirely with his own, as the General of a division subordinates his own ideas to those of the Commander-in-chief. Gistory will tell how ably he (Jed the American people through the great crisis of the wars with Spain and with the Filipinos, how des: terously he reconciled the acquisition of subject territories beyond the seas with Republican institutions. It is cruel that the pistol of a criminal lunatic should have prevented his carrying to a successful conclusion the policy he so skilfully inaugurate ed. Most dignified in appearance and manner, a man of Republican simplicity in his habits, evoking admiration from his political opponents as well as from his friend he goes to his grave mourned by al who feel how much poorer the world is by the sudden removal of a good man, The mourning is blended with sterner feelings when that removal is not in the ordinary course of nature, but is the result of a crime so un-nataral, unreasoning, and treacherous as that of the Gth of September, instant. It is strange that the telegraph has told us nothing of Mrs. McKinley. While the whole world sympathises with the American people in their loss, there is a still deeper sympathy for the loving and devoted wife so cruelly bereft when it must have seemed to her that the bitterness of death was past.
Theodore Roosevelt is now President of the United States. A New Yorker of an old Knickerbocker family, President Roosevelt has fur many years occupied a large space in the public eye, and has been justly one of New York's favourite soi He is a young man to fil such a position as that which he has now reached, having been born in 1858, but since he left Harvard College he has led a very full and strenuous. life as hunter, rancher, politician, author, and prominently as organiser and commander of the Rough-Riders in the war with Spain, He covered himself with glory at the battle of San Juan, and when he was elected Governor of his native State three years ago, it was generally felt that the next step to that appointment was the Presidency, but no-one could have imagined that he would take that step under such tragical cireumstances. While Governor Roosevelt has realised as Major McKinley did the necessity of consulting the wishes of the party managers, he is a man of more independence and individuality than the late President; nor will it be so easy to predict his course in important matters, though responsibility will no doubt check his native impetuosity, as it always docs. He, too, is emphatically a gentleman, and he is not likely to introduce any sudden changes in the course of the Government. He has the making in him of a great man given the opportunity: a picturesque figure in American politics he has always been, and he has now the chance to show that his capacity has not been over-rated. The United States is to be congratulated on- having Roosevelt ready to hand to succeed a McKinley.
"Tis God's way, his will be done," were, we are told, the last words of the President. It would have been impossible to better crown a good and useful life, nor could a better epitaph be placed upon his honoured tomb.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.