Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 April 1881 — Death of the Czar. [ARTICLE]

Death of the Czar.

--The American people do not believe in assassination as a remedy for political or social evils, nor d<> the American\people believe in despotism, as practiced in Russia. No good citizen of America’s 50,000,000 inhabitants wante to take human life. But in self-defense they will kill. They will slay a burglar or a highway robber as readily as they would a wild beast, if the protection of their persons or their homes require it. Russia** despotism can find no sympathy in America. Here the fundamental idea is that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights. This idea is extending its conquests —permeating society everywhere. It overleaps al lioundarles. It rises above all barriers. It defies all edicts and challenges armies and dynasties. It warms every human heart that is not dead to human needs. » It glows in all eyes that are capable of discerning human destiny.. it freshens in every cohscience not seared by the fires of bigotry and prejudice. it will triumph in the connct uriless the throne of eternal justice becomes like the Dead Sea fruit. In contemplating the death of the Czar the mind at once drifts away from the wreck wrought by the assassin’s instrument of death to Russian prisons and dungeons and Siberian mines, where thousands of Russians and Poles are suffering such death tortures as only fiends could inflict, for the high crime of hungering and thirsting after liberty—for uttering such great words as made Patrick Henry immortal —sud.h words as sent Emmet to the scaffold and Davitt to prison—such words as are coined by martyrs and pass current everywhere among the lovers of liberty. To these victims of Russian tyranny their is a warm current of human sympathy fdrever flowing. In the presence of the tortures of the victims- of Russian absolutism, human indignation, hot as a lava tide, bums the last lingering relic of regard for the mpnsters who inflict them out of the soul. The Czar, whose violent death has been announced, had it in bis power to release these lovers of freedom from their living tombs. Instead of doing that, he added to their number. Women and men, old and young, had caught the infection of liberty. They had read the Declaration of American Independence, and they ventured to express desires for which the human soul is forever pleading. As schools and books increased, the down-trodden millions of Russia learned more of their God given rights, and Alexander 111., who claims to be Emperor, and autocrat of all the Russias, Czar of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland, by the grace of God will find it exceedingly difficult to keep life in his body unless he broadens the area of Russian liberty. He may. call , upon all the Russian people to pray for him, and command them to swear fidelity to him and his boy, Duke Nicolai, but unless he recognizes the fact declared by Peter the Apostle, who was< greater than Peter the ’ Great that “God is no respecter of person,’’.and makesit a prominent feature of his reign,, he will be constantly in danger. The assassination of Alexander 11. is referred to by Alexander HI- by paying: “It has pleased Almighty God, in his inscrutable will, to visi» Ruzda with a heavy blow,’’ etc. We doubt not that it pleases God to see the shackles fall from the limbs of the oppressed victims of tyranny. Were it not so, Americans would be infidels in an hour. The way to end the conflict is for autocrats to yield, to abandon the the idea of “divine right’’ to rule—the idea that thrones are inherited with right to lord it over men whom God has created their equals. The assassination of Alerander 11. is an event that will shake every throne in Europe. The. guilty men who have oppressed their fellow-men will not rest easy upon their pillews. They are likely to feel that the god of retribution has marked them for sacrifice, And if they harden their hearts, and stiffen their necks, they only the more mvite destruction. The Bofers in South Africa, the famishing sons and laughters of Ireland.the thriee-cursed victims of Russia rule iu Poland, the 'laggard inhabitants of prisons and penal colonies, whose crimes' were . *ove of freedom, mingle their wails .vfth the mourners around the bier of :he dead Czar, and their friends tell that, catching inspiration from the genius of American liberty, they will work out their emancipation through ‘very crowned head has to fall. It is .he spirit that inspired Washington »nd his compatriotsjiu the fiercestrug'le with King George, and it is a spirit that will live and animate the human family until the last victim of lespotism stands forth crowned with *ll the rights of free’ men.—lndianapilie Sentinel. . ‘