As we have pointed out elsewhere, the crime will probably
have few political consequences, but this insecurity of the Kings, Presidents, and prominent statesmen is a most serious political evil. It makes them all distrust liberal ideas, and feel as if they were officers resisting a siege. It increases also a certain tendency to savage "repression," even cool men like Lord Salisbury saying publicly that such crimes are treated too leniently. We agree so far that we demand for them, even when only attempted, the inexorable penalty of death; but how are we to go further ? If we execute the suspected, we give up justice ; if we torture the guilty, we depart from Christianity ; if we let the mob work its will, which would be the effective deterrent, we step back in civili- sation. We entirely agree that killing a King or a necessary statesman is more than murder, is an effort, in fact, to kill a community ; but what can we do within the moral law that is not done ? We greatly fear the only preventive, though they hate it so cordially, is greater precaution on the part of the Kings.
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