ration of
legal justice. When David S. Terry publicly and ostentatiously
slapped the face of this high official--this representative of
public justice--the blow being in all probability the intended
prelude to a still more atrocious offense, he committed a
gross violation of the peace and dignity of the United States.
The echo of the blow made the blood tingle in the veins of
every true American, and from every quarter, far and near,
thick and fast, came denunciations of the outrage. That any
man under a government created "by the people, for the people"
shall assume to be a law unto himself, the sole despot in a
community based on the idea of the equality of all before
the law, and the willing submission and obedience of all to
established rule, is simply intolerable.

In his audacious assault on "the powers that be" Terry took
his life in his hand, and no lover of peace and good order can
regret that, of the two lives in peril, his was extinguished.
He threw down the gage of battle to the whole community, and
it is well that he was vanquished in the strife.

In the early part of the war of the rebellion General Dix,
of New York, was placed in charge of one of the disaffected
districts. We had then hardly begun to see that war was a very
stern condition of things, and that it actually involved the
necessity of killing. Those familiar with the incidents of
that time will remember how the General's celebrated order,
"If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him
on the spot," thrilled the slow pulses of the Northern heart
like the blast of a bugle. Yet some adverse obstructionist
might object that the punishment pronounced far exceeded
the offense, which was merely the effort to detach from its
position a piece of colored bunting. But it is the _animus_
that characterizes the act. An insult offered to a mere
symbol of authority becomes, under critical circumstances,
an unpardonable crime. If the symbol, instead of being an
inanimate object, be a human being--a high officer of the
Government--does not such an outrage as that committed by
Terry exceed in enormity the offense denounced by General Dix?
And if so, why should the punishment be less?

In every civilized community, society, acting with a keen
instinct of self-preservation, has always puni