ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT CARNOT.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 150, 25 June 1894, Page 2

ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT CARNOT.

The Presidenb of the French Republic has fallen beneath the hand of the assassin, thus sharing bhe fats

of Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield. The details as yet are so meagre that we cannob say whethe r the murderer of the French President is a lunatic, an anarchist, or a disappointed office-seeking politician, bub his sad and tragic fate emphasises the lesson so often taught by history that the administrators of free institutions are no more secure against tbe violence of political malcontents, than is tbe Autocrat of All the Russias.

President Car nob was born ab Limoges, August, 1837. He is a grandson of Carnob "the organiser of victory" under the French convention, and is a civil engineer by profession. When only twenby years of age he entered as a student the Ecole Polytechnique, and passed with distinction to a school for special instruction in the building of roads and bridges. During the siege of Paris (January, 1871) he waa appointed Prefect of the Seine Inferieure, and aB Commissary - General gave valuable assistance in organising the defences of that Department. A monbh later he took his Beat in the National Assembly as deputy for Cote dOr, ranging himself in line with the Republican left. He afterwards sat for Beaune. In 1886 he took office in the Brisson Cabinet as Finance Minister, bhe duties of which he also filled when M. de Freycinet formed his Government in January, 1887. On the resignation of M. Grovy (Dec. 2nd, '87) M. Carnob was elected President ot the Republic. The Czar of Russia conferred on him the Order of St. Andrew in March '91. During the Franco-Russian fetes he took a prominenb parb both ab Paris and ab Toulon, and in consequence of bhese it was said that'lie had determined to stand again for the Presidency (Ocbober, 1893).