ed the debate. He said:

"There are rare instances when the sympathy of a nation
approaches those tenderer feelings that generally speaking,
are supposed to be peculiar to the individual, and to form
the happy privilege of private life; and this is one. Under
all circumstances we should have bewailed the catastrophe at
Washington; under all circumstances we should have shuddered
at the means by which it was accomplished. But in the
character of the victim, and even in the accessories of his
last moments there is something so homely and so innocent
that it takes as it were the subject out of all the pomp of
history and the ceremonial of diplomacy; it touches the heart
of nations, and appeals to the domestic sentiment of mankind.

"Sir, whatever the various and varying opinions in this
House, and in the country generally on the policy of the late
President of the United States, on this, I think, all must
agree, that in one of the severest trials which ever tested
the moral qualities of man, he fulfilled his duty with
simplicity and strength. Nor is it possible for the people of
England, at such a moment, to forget that he sprang from the
same fatherland, and spoke the same mother tongue.

"When such crimes are perpetrated the public mind is apt to
fall into gloom and perplexity; for it is ignorant alike of
the causes and the consequences of such deeds. But it is one
of our duties to reassure the country under unreasoning panic
or despondency. Assassination has never changed the history
of the world....

"In expressing our unaffected and profound sympathy with the
citizens of the United States at the untimely end of their
elected Chief, let us not, therefore, sanction any feeling of
depression, but rather let us express a fervent hope that
from out the awful trials of the last four years, of which
not the least is this violent demise, the various populations
of North America may issue elevated and chastened; rich in
that accumulated wisdom, and strong in that disciplined
energy which a young nation can only acquire in a protracted
and perilous struggle. Then they will be enabled not merely
to renew their career of power and prosperity, but they will
renew it to contribute to the general happiness of mankind.
It is with these