"We turn from this record of active and honorable service to a brief consideration, such as the occasion permits, of the elements of character which distinguished President Garfield. After all, character is the only enduring form of wealth. It is the power by which the world is ruled, and the only legacy of true value that can be transmitted to posterity. "We cannot forget what occurred during the administration of Mr. Lincoln, or of his successor, Mr. Johnson. We have witnessed no such political convulsions in our day. No one ever justified the assassination of Mr. Lincoln on such grounds, or would now counsel such violence against the chiefs of earlier administrations. Neither can it now be done with truth or justice. Those who enlisted in the opposition to past administrations were men whose intellectual and moral natures restrained them from the execution of purposes dictated by passion. To those whose feeble intellects deprive them of moral restraint we should give support, and never justify, by thought or act, conduct that, under other circumstances, might have endangered the lives of every President of the Republic! There is no cause or incitement to crime in the political controversies of this year, that might not have occurred under any other administration; and no cause or justification, of any kind whatever, for such an ineffable and inexpiable crime as the murder of the mild, generous, warm-hearted, forgiving, and Christian Chief Magistrate whose loss we mourn. "Political assassination is not insanity. It proceeds from infection and distemper of the mind. It is not necessarily limited to the reform administrations and governments, nor to any special form of government. It can as well be applied to the settlement of a grocery bill, if an excitation be created, as to the overthrow of a dynasty. "It is another form of the doctrine of annihilation, and the remedy for its evil is to avoid convulsions, private and public, restrain passion, avoid injustice, practise moderation in all things, and do no evil that good may come. "The year 1881 is the complement of the full half-century since the first open movement was organized for the control or destruction of our government. The lesson of this half-century, with all its trials, sacrifices and triumphs, is that it is good to maintain and defend the government of our country and its lawfully constituted authorities, whether or not we created them or like them. In the contemplation of this half-century, can we find cause to wish the government had been destroyed? Or can we now wish it destroyed?