isposition to insult the
fallen, no matter how vile may be their offences or how just their fall,
is not an American characteristic; but so wide-spread and well-founded
was the indignation caused by the basest murder of modern times, that we
might have been unjust to ourselves, if the murderer had come whole into
our hands. Therefore the shot of Sergeant Corbett is not to be
regretted, save that it gave too honorable a form of death to one who
had earned all that there is of disgraceful in that mode of dying to
which a peculiar stigma is attached by the common consent of mankind.

Whether Booth was the agent of a band of conspirators, or was one of a
few vile men who sought an odious immortality, it is impossible to say.
We have the authority of a high Government official for the statement
that "the President's murder was organized in Canada and approved at
Richmond"; but the evidence in support of this extraordinary
announcement is, doubtless for the best of reasons, withheld at the time
we write. There is nothing improbable in the supposition that the
assassination plot was formed in Canada, as some of the vilest
miscreants of the Secession side have been allowed to live in that
country. We know that there were other plots formed in that country
against us,--plots that were to a certain extent carried into execution,
and which led to loss of life. The ruffians who were engaged in the St.
Albans raid--which was as much an insult to England as it was a wrong to
us--were exactly the sort of men to engage in a conspiracy to murder
Federal magistrates; but it is not probable that British subjects had
anything to do with any conspiracy of this kind. The Canadian error was
in allowing the scum of Secession to abuse the "right of hospitality"
through the pursuit of hostile action against us from the territory of a
neutral. If injustice is done their country in this instance, Canadians
should recollect that what is known to have been done there for our
injury is quite sufficient to warrant the suspicion that more was there
done to increase the difficulties of our situation than now distinctly
appears. The country that contains such justices as Coursol and Smith
cannot complain, if its sense of fairness is not rated very high by its
neighbors,--neighbors who have suffered from Secessionists being allowed
to make Canada a basis of operations against the United States, though
the United States and Great Britain are at peace.

Th