Everything foretells the doom of authority. The killing of kings is
no new industry; it is as ancient as the race. Always and everywhere
persons in high place have been the assassin’s prey. We have ourselves
lost three presidents by murder, and shall doubtless lose many another
before the book of American history is closed. If anything is new in
this activity of the regicide it is found in the choice of victims. The
contemporary “avenger” slays, not the merely “exalted,” but the good
and the inoffensive—an American president who had struck the chains
from millions of slaves; a Russian czar who against the will and work
of his own powerful nobles had freed their serfs; a French president
from whom the French people had received nothing but good; a powerless
Austrian empress, whose weight of sorrows had touched the world to
tears; a blameless Italian king beloved of his people; such is a part
of the recent record of the regicide, whose every entry is a tale of
infamy unrelieved by one circumstance of justice, decency or good
intention.
This recent uniformity of malevolence in the choice of victims is not
without significance. It points unmistakably to two facts: first, that
the selections are made, not by the assassins themselves, but by some
central control inaccessible to individual preference and unaffected
by the fortunes of its instruments; second, that there is a constant
purpose to manifest an antagonism, not to any individual ruler, but to
rulers; not to any system of government, but to government. The issue
is defined, the alignment made, the battle set: Chaos against Order,
Anarchy against Law.