Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1881 — Common Sense About Guiteau. [ARTICLE]

Common Sense About Guiteau.

Chicago Inter-Ocean. There is no other created thing in this world quite so dangerous as a fool. When the fool has just a sufficient modicum of brains to become crazy the dafiger is doubled. When a being of *ls make-up studies law, he simply ds method to his madness; and when, in addition to all thereat, he becomes possessed of some sort of a religious frenzy, his capacity for mischief is complete. Such a combination of moral and intellectual odds and ends is Guiteau. He has been well known here in Chicago, off and on, for these fifteen years. He was a sort oj hanger-on at the office of a very respectable attorney here, whose kindnees he abused in every imaginable way, until he was finally gotten rid of, and then for a season he professed to practice law in an office of his own. He had neither brains enough to cheat people out of a living, nor honesty enough to excuse his want of capacity,

and so he fared but poorly in the law. He tamed his attention to theological pursuits and made a book. He came to understand all spiritual mysteries, and gave pnbiic lectures on religious topics—or woufd if he could have got an audience together in response to his numerous advertisements. He knew al) about the second oming of Jesus Christ, and there was no hidden thing that he could not expound. Then he had a mission among the newspapers, and got up wild schemes for getting other people to furnish money that be might instruct the world through a daily publication ofhis own. He went to New York, and did manage there to Et so fhr into the mysteries of journaln as to be arrested for confiscating money collected for one of the great dailies of that city. He took in politics as a part of the universal affairs of mankind which needed his guidance, and has latterly been a pestiferous

loafer about Washington, whom nobody ever wanted to aee or was able to get rid of! He haa now probably gratified the loftiest reach of his ambition. He haa immortalsed himself as the meanest sneak of the nineteenth cen tury. There is no lesson to be learned from such a thing as Goiteau. He is not the fruit of despotism, nor the fruit of reSbßcaniam. He la not a fruit or anying; he is simply a worm-eaten windfall. His friends cannot be charged with neglect of doty, for he has never been miotic enough to be sent to any asylum for the fetae-mind-ed, or crazy enough to be sent to an hospital for the insane; and his vices have not heretofore been vigorous enough to land him in the pemtenti-

ary. The fool-killer, if the world were only blessed with such a benefactor, would have taken him m hand long ago, but in the present Imperfect state of human laws there has been no way to interefere with Guiteau’s personal freedom. He will not serve as a warning to parents, for he was well brought up; nor as a frightful example to boys, for he did not, in the ordinary sense, fall into evil ways. He was not ruined by bad companions nor by strong drink. *He was not pointed at as a Sabbath-breaker, nor as a scoffer at religion. . He ran no coarse of crime. He had no downfall. All that he ever was he continued to be up to the day of assassination. He was simply an intellectual weakling without moral sense. He came near killing his own sister once, to whom he was under every obligation for care and snpport, bat still he did not usually manifest a murderous disposition, and was uot considered an unsafe man to have at

large. It matters little what beco mes of Guiteau. Hanging would be a coru,pliment to his Intelligence, and would very likely seem to him a heroic way of going out of the world. His predecessor in assassination, sixteen years ago, was shot like a dog in the street, and his crime was never dignified by a trial. If Guiteau’s worthless life had somehow been snuffed out in the depot at Washington, Saturday morning, it would have been taxing human nature too much to ask any regrets over his speedy dissolution.