THE ARREST OF FIELD AN OUTRAGE AND AN ABSURDITY.

The California magistrate who issued a warrant for Justice Field’s arrest is obviously a donkey of the most precious quality.  The Justice had been brutally assailed by a notorious ruffian who had publicly declared his intention to kill his enemy.  Before Justice Field could even rise from his chair a neat-handed deputy United States marshal shot the ruffian.  Justice Field had no more to do with the shooting than any other bystander, and even if there had been doubt on that point it was certain that a justice of the United States Supreme Court was not going to run away beyond the jurisdiction.  His arrest was, therefore, as absurd as it was outrageous.  It was asked for by the demented widow of the dead desperado simply as a means of subjecting the Justice to an indignity, and no magistrate possessed of even a protoplasmic possibility of common sense and character would have lent himself in that way to such a service.

The Kansas City Times, in its issue at this period, uses the following language: 

    NO ONE WILL CENSURE.

    Gratitude for Judge field’s Escape the Chief Sentiment.

Deputy Marshal Neagle acted with terrible promptitude in protecting the venerable member of the Supreme Court with whose safety he was specially charged, but few will be inclined to censure him.  He had to deal with a man of fierce temper, whose readiness to use firearms was part of the best known history of California.

It is a subject for general congratulation that Justice Field escaped the violence of his assailant.  The American nation would be shocked to learn that a judge of its highest tribunal could not travel without danger of assault from those whom he had been compelled to offend by administering the laws.  Justice Field has the respect due his office and that deeper and more significant reverence produced by his character and abilities.  Since most of the present generation were old enough to observe public affairs he has been a jurist of national reputation and a sitting member of the Supreme Court.  In that capacity he has earned the gratitude of his countrymen by bold and unanswerable defense of sound constitutional interpretation on more than one occasion.  In all the sad affair the most prominent feeling will be that of gratitude at his escape.

The Army and Navy Journal, in its issue of August 24, 1889, had the following article under the head of—­

    MARSHAL NEAGLE’S CRIME.

The public mind appears to be somewhat unsettled upon the question of the right of Neagle to kill Terry while assaulting Judge Field.  His justification is as clear as is the benefit of his act to a long-suffering community.  Judge Field was assaulted unexpectedly from behind, while seated at a dining-table, by a notorious assassin and ruffian, who had sworn to kill him, and who, according