The universal acquiescence of public opinion in the justifiable character of the act which terminated the life of the late David S. Terry is to be accounted for by the peculiar nature of the offense which he had committed.  It was not for a mere assault, though perpetrated under circumstances which rendered it peculiarly reprehensible, that he met his death without eliciting from the community one word of condemnation for the slayer or of sympathy with the slain.

Mr. Justice Field is an officer of high rank in the most important department of the Government of the United States, namely, that which is charged with the administration of legal justice.  When David S. Terry publicly and ostentatiously slapped the face of this high official—­this representative of public justice—­the blow being in all probability the intended prelude to a still more atrocious offense, he committed a gross violation of the peace and dignity of the United States.  The echo of the blow made the blood tingle in the veins of every true American, and from every quarter, far and near, thick and fast, came denunciations of the outrage.  That any man under a government created “by the people, for the people” shall assume to be a law unto himself, the sole despot in a community based on the idea of the equality of all before the law, and the willing submission and obedience of all to established rule, is simply intolerable.

In his audacious assault on “the powers that be” Terry took his life in his hand, and no lover of peace and good order can regret that, of the two lives in peril, his was extinguished.  He threw down the gage of battle to the whole community, and it is well that he was vanquished in the strife.

In the early part of the war of the rebellion General Dix, of New York, was placed in charge of one of the disaffected districts.  We had then hardly begun to see that war was a very stern condition of things, and that it actually involved the necessity of killing.  Those familiar with the incidents of that time will remember how the General’s celebrated order, “If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot,” thrilled the slow pulses of the Northern heart like the blast of a bugle.  Yet some adverse obstructionist might object that the punishment pronounced far exceeded the offense, which was merely the effort to detach from its position a piece of colored bunting.  But it is the animus that characterizes the act.  An insult offered to a mere symbol of authority becomes, under critical circumstances, an unpardonable crime.  If the symbol, instead of being an inanimate object, be a human being—­a high officer of the Government—­does not such an outrage as that committed by Terry exceed in enormity the offense denounced by General Dix?  And if so, why should the punishment be less?

In every civilized community, society, acting with a keen instinct of self-preservation,