[From the Journal des Debats, May 4, 1865.]
It is well to die; that is a reflection we cannot help making on reading the funeral oration of Abraham Lincoln, such as was pronounced on the 1st of May by Earl Russell in the House of Lords. If the good citizen and the honest excellent man whom America laments has waited a long time for a little justice at the hands of the English ministers, the justice now due to him is so much the more striking as it has been slow.
No fear appears to be entertained in North America about the consequences of the murder of Lincoln. Certainly, some alarm and perturbation were felt at first; here the northern soldiers wanted to massacre the prisoners of the south; there old soldiers of the south, enrolled under northern banners, attempted to revolt; elsewhere the mob desired to burn the offices of the journals of the democratic party. All these movements were very quickly and very easily put down. The taking of Mobile, moreover, was another blow dealt to the cause of the South. The murder of Lincoln has aggravated the difficulty of treating with the South, and done nothing to embarrass the victory of the North.