It appears that Duchesne, the drunken Belgian workman accused of
intending to murder Prince Bismarck, really did write to the Archbishop of Paris, offering to kill the Chancellor for £2,400, and that there is no law to,punish him. The Belgian Government, therefore, proposes to introduce a law making such offers punishable, and the Liberals will support it. There seems no objection to such a measure, except that it will be proposed and passed under an appearance at all events, of foreign pres- sure. A law identical in principle, though it accidentally omits to cover the special case of the addressee .and the proposed victim being both foreigners, exists, as we have elsewhere shown, in our own Statute-book; and after all, a deliberate proposal to kill a man for a price is a crime. Whether a law declaring it to be one will help to protect anybody is a different matter. We take it, most successful assassins—there have been exceptions in Spain
—have been unpaid, and that any man rich and cowardly enough to suborn a bravo would be cowardly enough also to avoid writing about his crime. However, if Prince Bismarck will be more comfortable with such a law, let him have it, by all means. When he is content Europe is tranquil, for that five minutes at all events.
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