And he may keep who can.
We purpose passing in review a few of the chief events which have moved the world during the past year and made its annals memorable in all time. Our review must necessarily be a rapid one, a mere glance in fact, at the multitude of events which confront us, some like ghosts which we have summoned from their graves in the buried year, others which accompany us into the new and the unknown to ripen or wither with us into their measure of good or of evil.
As the year opened, the eyes of the world were fixed upon the sick-bed of the Prince of Wales, stricken down by fever apparently beyond hope of recovery. The whole thing is long forgotten; but the anxiety which his illness caused—in view of the possible political complications which might have resulted from the death of the heir to the English throne—and the enthusiasm which his recovery evoked from end to end of the land, makes the event worthy of mention in the record of the year as significant of the innate as well as outspoken loyalty of the English nation for their crown and institution—a national trait which it is becoming fashionable to question.
Our own year opened tragically with the murder of Fisk by Stokes, his boon companion. The man's end was in keeping with his life, and his name [pg 559] should not have sullied our pages, but for the consequent collapse of the long triumphant Erie Ring. The era of blood thus commenced has flourished bravely. Quid novi? quid novi? was the daily cry at Athens when S. Paul entered it. We would not demean the commercial metropolis of the New World and of the new age by comparing it with the intellectual metropolis of paganism; but as the cry of the Athenians was each day: What new system, doctrine, or philosophy is there? the question of our more enlightened and Christian capital might well be: What new thing in the way of murder? Scarcely a day passes but some fresh horror greets our eyes in the morning. Nor is it left to the hand of man alone to take life as he pleases; the privilege has passed to women, and they make right good use of this latest form of their “rights.” We read till our blood curdles of the political poisonings of the XVIth century in Italy; of their secrecy and the safety of their carrying out. We are a more honest race than the Italians; we enshroud our deeds of blood in no false Machiavellian veil; we kill in open day. The lady or gentleman who has just taken away a life politely hands the pistol to the officer, who escorts him or her with the utmost courtesy to the police station, where a cell is luxuriously fitted up according to the exigencies of the case; the murderer stands up in open court, with the ablest champions to defend him; he calls upon the law to save him, and the “law” does. In the meantime obtuse people are beginning to inquire if there be such a thing as law in New York, and in America generally, and if the present administration of justice be not very closely allied to administering injustice.
We have felt compelled to touch on this point at some length; for murder, cool, deliberate, wilful murder, has marked our year with a red stain which was never dry; the murderers have either escaped or are living at ease and being “lionized” by the press in their prisons; justice is not administered among us. So true is this, that outraged public feeling, which requires a very heavy force to set its inertia in motion, has at length found it necessary to begin to weed the judiciary. Until it does so thoroughly, the law of New York is the law of the bullet and the knife.
If we were not above taking a lesson from people for whom we entertain, of course, a sovereign contempt, we might find something commendable in the action of the populace in Lima, Peru, on the occasion of the murder of Colonel Balta, the president, by Guttierez, the minister of war; who, in order to attain supreme power, caused Balta to be assassinated, having previously gained over the garrison of Lima, and had himself proclaimed dictator. The people, finding reason to object to this summary mode of settling questions, refused to accept this dictatorship; rose in revolt, overpowered the garrison, hanged the dictator and his brother to lamp-posts in the public square, and burned their bodies. We, are far from advocating the cause of “Judge Lynch”; but a slight touch of the sensible spirit displayed by the inhabitants of Lima has a wonderfully wholesome effect on evil doers in power.
Our political life for the past year has been absorbed in the presidential election and the settlement of the Alabama claims. This latter very vexed question has come at last to a final, peaceful, and satisfactory solution. Our claim for “indirect damages” against England was ruled out of court. An adequate propitiation was made in the final decision, given in our favor: England was compelled to pay us £3,000,000; she is supposed to have lost very much in prestige in consequence; particularly as the San Juan boundary question was also decided in our favor; the whole thing was settled by peaceful arbitration, and, therefore, no matter which party lost in prestige, or diplomacy, or pocket, both have good reason to congratulate themselves on getting out of sight, let us ardently hope, for ever, a very ugly question which was fast becoming a gangrene, corroding and eating out all good feeling between the two nations. It is one of the things which we sincerely trust may be buried with the dead year; and the two rival claimants we hope to see enter on a new lease of friendship and good-will.
General Grant was re-elected; the opposition arrayed against him under Mr. Greeley as candidate for the presidency, and such very able secessionists from the republican ranks as Messrs. Sumner, Schurz, and others, and the attempted coalescing of Democrats with dissatisfied Republicans, who would not coalesce, utterly broke down. General Grant's is undoubtedly a national election: we trust, therefore, that his future term may [pg 560] correspond with the confidence placed in his rule by the nation; may be productive of all the good which we expect of it for the nation at large; may heal up old wounds still sore, and may lead the country wisely into a new era of prosperity and peace: the more so that the outer world is fast pouring in on us the most skilled artisans and law-abiding, intelligent citizens of every European race.
Having said so much for ourselves, we turn to the workings of events in Europe during the past year, which indeed have occupied our attention more, almost, than our home questions. Our gaze has been riveted with an interest of almost painful intensity on the two contestants during the late dread struggle, and the actions and bearing of each have brought out the inner character of the two nations in such strong relief that we can think of Germany and France as two individualities. On the one side, we behold United Germany, the victor in the fight, like a strong athlete glorying in his great strength, setting on his own brow the laurels which he plucked from that of his fallen foe; not resting on his honors, and satiated for the time being with his glory, but anxious, careful, trying his strength, not letting his arms rust for want of practice, preparing himself for new glories and new contests to come as though they were to come to-morrow, and as a matter of course. On the other, we have France wounded and bleeding at every pore. We thought its life had ebbed out, stricken first by the terrible blows of a merciless conqueror, after by a delirious contest with itself. And what do we behold? No longer a weak convalescent, sick, sore, and spiritless, but a great nation, infused with a new life; strong and gaining in strength every day; cautious indeed and still uncertain, but these are not bad signs in a nation which is recovering at however rapid strides, and which fell from its overweening confidence. It has almost exhausted its terrible debt to Germany, and rid the soil of the foot of the foe. Its loans were eagerly taken up and covered four times over: its exports for the first six months of the year were in advance of those for the corresponding six months, esteemed a period of great prosperity, prior to the war; its army is again on a firm and sound footing; its children are peaceful, calm and obedient to the law in the face of the tyranny and unnecessarily harsh measures and dictation of the conqueror and the rash declamations of Gambetta, biding their time with a calm good sense which we scarcely expected in the French people. Of course the nation is taxed and heavily; but the wonder is that a nation can endure such blows and live; can not only live, but present to the admiration and astonished gaze of the world, a year after what we considered its death and burial, so glorious a resurrection into a powerful and wealthy country. As these two nations have been the centre of attraction to the whole world during the year, we feel called upon to touch upon each in a more special manner than on other nations.
On April 7th, the Emperor William delivered a speech from the throne, from which we cull the following extract: