Of course there was no conspiracy, and Oxford the pot-boy, "a pot-boy
was, and, nothing more." He was acquitted on the ground of insanity, but
ordered to be confined "during Her Majesty's pleasure," which he was in
Bedlam for some years. Then he was sent to Australia as cured, and where
he went into better business than shooting Queens, and earned an honest
living, they say. He always declared that he was not insane, except from
a mad passion for notoriety--which he got.
The five or six successors of Oxford who have shot at Her Majesty, and
that wretched retired officer, Robert Pate, who waylaid her in 1850, and
struck her a cruel blow across the face with a walking-stick, were
pronounced insane, and confined in mad-houses merely. The English are too
proud and politic to admit that a sane man can lift his hand against the
Constitutional Sovereign of England. When there arrived in London the
news of the shooting of President Garfield, a distinguished English
gentleman said to me, "I think we will not be annexed to the United
States while you shoot your Presidents."
I replied by reminding him of the many attempts on the life of his
beloved Queen, adding, "I believe the homicidal mania is a Monarchical as
well as a Republican affliction,--the difference only is that, unhappily
for us, our madmen are the better shots.
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