commissioned as an officer of the court. He warned the
assailant to desist, and knowing his custom to go armed, and
that he had threatened the Justice, and Terry refusing to
restrain his blows, it was Neagle's duty to save life, to
strike down the assailant in the most effectual manner. Men
who, having the ability to prevent murder, stand by and see
it committed, may well be held to accountability for criminal
negligence.

But in this case it is clear that murder was intended on the
part of the Terrys. One of them ran for her pistol and brought
it, and would have reached the other's side with it in time,
had she not been detained by strong men at the door. Neagle
saw this woman depart, and coupling it with the advance of
Terry, knew, as a matter of course, what it meant. He had been
deputed by the chief law officer of the Government--in view of
previous assaults by the Terrys and their threats and display
of weapons in court--to stand guard over the judges and
protect them. He acted, therefore, precisely as it was proper
he should do. Had he been less prompt and vigorous, all the
world knows that not he but Terry would to-day be in custody,
and not Terry but the venerable justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States would to-day be in the coffin.

These remarks have grown too extended for any elaboration of
the moral of the tragedy that culminated in the killing of
David S. Terry yesterday. But we cannot allow the subject to
be even temporarily dismissed without calling the thought
of the reader to contemplation of the essential truth that
society is bound to protect the judges of the courts of the
land from violence and the threats of violence; otherwise
the decisions of our courts must conform to the violence
threatened, and there will be an end of our judicial
system, the third and most valuable factor in the scheme of
representative government. Society cannot, therefore, punish,
but must applaud the man who defends the courts of the people
and the judges of those courts from such violence and threats
of violence. For it must be apparent to even the dullest
intellect that all such violence is an outrage upon the
judicial conscience, and therefore involves and puts in peril
the liberties of the people.

The New Orleans _Times-Democrat,_ in one of its issues