The Sun.
London, England, 1851-10-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROSI THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.

TIM ES.—Tae- cxemcivo is undoubt,dly the weak
side of the ultra-democratic theory of government. It
is very well to tell us that the people are the only
source of legitimate power, and that all functions—
legislative, judicial, and executive, are only delegates
to individuals of the inherent might of the body poli-
tic. This resolution of all questions of government
into the relation of principal and agent works pretty
well, so long as the matters in question are compli-
cated, and such as the masses, though claiming the
right, have not the power to manage for themselves.
But in the simpler acts of popular sovereignty, there
is alWays danger lest the ruling democracy should
sweep aside its delegates, and exercise the powers of
government in its own person. This we presume to
be the theory upon which the acts of Lynch law, now
so unfortunately associated with the name of Cali-
fornia, are defended by the thousands who give their
presence and approval to their perpetration. Some
such sedative to the conscience there mutt be, for it is
impossible to conceive that thousands of persons who
have been instructed, however imperfectly, in their
duties ai citiz?ns and Christians, should applaud
the perpetration of a gross insult to popular sove-
reigaty and a wilful'and deliberate murder, did they
vie iv the matter in that light. Yet what sophism can be
more transparent ? The people who make the law
and appoint the Executive are the whole population
of the State, legally convened and solemnly delibera-
ting. The people who set aside the Executive, and
take the law into their own hands, or rather abrogate
it altogether, are a multitude casually collected, led
on, as all multitudes are, by a few persons actuated
by furious passions and gratifying the love of ven-
geance and the thirst of blood under the abused forms
and hollow masquerade of justice. If it be true that
no power less than that which founded a constitution
can abrogate it, the sovereignty of the people itself is
trampled under foot by proceedings which, however
great the number of accomplices in their guilt, can
never attain the solemnity or authority of the acts by
which it is sanctioned. The practice of this model
republic presents a curious application of the favourite
principle of competition. In order effectively to
prevent dangers to life and property, two rival
executives are called into existence, and Set to work
independently of and in hostile opposition to each
.Other. " Him that escapeth the sword of Jehu
shall Dish slay,' might be adopted as the
motto of the Californian Vigilance Committee.
There it is not " statutes that glean the refuse of the
sword," but rather the sword that gleans the refuse of
the statutes. When 'a crime has been committed the
law punishes all 'that it can, and the Vigilance Com-
mittee, the antitype of the law, wreaks its vengeance
on the remainder. This competitive and concurrent
jurisdiction is a new feature in the, dreary annals of
the Draconic code of Lynch. Formerly we were ac-
cestomed to consider Lynch law as a remedy only to
'be justified on the tyrant's plea of necessity, in cases
where such summary, measures could alone prevent
the escape of some great criminal from justice. But
in California, Lynch law bears to the established
jurisprudence of the country somewhat the same re-
lation as courts of equity to their sister tribunals of
the common law. It permits the ordinary tribunals
to proceed so long as they proceed according to its
wishes; 'and only interferes to correct their errors or
to' supply their defects. Of each of these kinds of ju-
risdiction our late accounts from California afford
striking and-terrible instances. At San Francisco the
Vigilance Committee had obtained possession of the
personsof two criminals, and was about to execute jus-
tice upon them after its own summary fashion. The
Government fell into the error of considering that
such matters were not exclusive the province of the
Vigilance Cornmittee whenever it chose to act,
rescued the prisoners, and placed them in the gaol of
the city. They speedily found out their mistake. In
the open day, with overwhelming force, the criminals
vvdre'recaptured, and hung with every circumstance
of publicity in the presence of the whole population
of the city. The coroner immediately held his in-
quest on the bodies, and the jury found a verdict
which clearly implied that the law against murder
has no application when life is taken away at the
bidding of a multitude. There was tolerably brisk
competition between the two Executives; the popular
demand for, blood exceeded the regular supply, and
the Vigilance Committee undertook to make up what
was wanting. The second case was at Sacramento,
where three persons 'having been condemned to
death, 'the Governor respited one and left the law
to take its course as to the other two. After
they had been executed under the authority of
the. Sheriff, that official withdrew and left his place
to be occupied by, the self-appointed ministers of
popular vengeance, and in the same place, on
ethe' -seine gibbet, 'the criminal whom law had
respited, but whom lawless force condemned, met the
same fate as his companions. Thus, in this so-called
free community has arisen an arbitrary power engros-
sing to itself the vindictive and terrible, unrelieved
by any of the mild and conciliatory attributes of
royalty. Law, the protection of the weak against the
strong, of the individual against the mass, of the ob-
noxious against the popular, of the minority against
the majority, exists only in California as an occa-
sional and exceptional rule, liable to be bent or snap-
ped asunder at any time by the band a supreme and
irresponsible power, which assumes to execute jus-
tice while it knows not mercy, and unrelentingly pu-
nishes in others the infraction of statutes of which it
is itself the most daring and conspicuous violator. It
is remarkable that the tyrant's plea of necessity does
not apply to either of these cases, which have, as we
have before said, much more the air of a race in cruelty
between the lawful and the unlawful Executive, than
of stern and deliberate justice forced from unwilling
hands by an overpowering apprehension for the
public safety. In the first case the men were
recaptured by the Vigilance Committee before it
could possibly be known what fate awaited them
at the hands of the regular judicial and executive
powers, and in the second a crime, for the expiation of
which two lives were sacrificed, could give no colour
for illegal violence in order to augment the number
of victims. In this the republican icquisition is only
following in the steps of all bodies which have con-
trived to raise themselves to a similar pitch of arbi-
trary and uncontrollable power. The necessity on
which the assumption of that power was founded is
soon lost sight of, and gradual encroachments are
made, till tyranny and cruelty become their own pre-
cedent. The country where such things can be done,
and done with impunity, may be rich, but has no
claim to the title of free. That hardy plant will
not flourish on its golden soil. What matters it
under what name the tyranny is disguised ? The man
whole life can be taken from him at any moment by
a stretch of arbitrary power is a slave, whether his
serfdom be concealed under the name of citizen of a
republaicu,ocrrat I
paradedt will be
under the
eaibadtoo
geloofkr orderthfuesubect
of an to
or to hope for tranquillity in a society where every
mind is full of the spectacle of such wild and
frightful excesses. The same code of public morality
which sanctions the knotting of the halter in public
will find no greater difficulty in reconciling itself to
the use of the knife or the pistol in private. Human
nature, to use the words of Thucydides, having con-
quered, the law will eagerly show that she is intem-
perate in anger, and an enemy of her superiors. If
no other consideration could restrain these fearful
outbreaks of vindictive passion, it ought to have oc-
curred to those who thus create and stimulate a po.
pular taste for sights of blood and scenes whose at-
tractions consist in human suffering and the fierce
passions by which it is surrounded, to consider how
easily such a craving for the stimulus of horror is
created, and how constantly it must require fresh
victims. The elegant and philosophical Roman found
no sight so alluring as the deadly combat of gladia-
tors. The lovely daughters of Spain could smile and
flirt over the horrors of an auto da Jo just as their
fair descendants do now over the sanguinary brutali-
ties of a bull-fight. Man, the paragon of nature, has
lurking about him something of the tiger, and woe
to that State and that people where this deeply-seated
instinct is stimulated and encouraged instead of being
repressed and subdued.

HERALD.—We are the last persons in the world
who would be disposed to encourage a too prying ex-
amination into the affairs of the Continent of Europe
In rhwmhoiliwtaoruyldosregeai
knztaotiosnowofdisEtruursope distrust among
take
statneso.
very great interest—for this organization affects us
in a very subordinate degree. With the naval organ-
ization of Continental Europe, or the efforts of any
state to obtain a seaboard, it is, however, different.
These efforts, be they great or be they small, affect
us intimately, and may have an influence very much
greater than would at the first blush appear. We
hold it to be the business of British statesmen and
politicians to see that the preponderance of Great
Britain on the seas is always maintained, for this pre-
ponderance
is not alone necessary to the maintenance
and extension of our commercial and colonial system,
but it is indispensable to our well-being—Day, to our
very existence as a nation. Hence it is that anything
that has a tendency to alter the relative maritime
forces of Europe ought to immediately engage
our attention. Most certainly we have no desire
to exaggerate • the power of Russia, or to cre-
ate suspicions in reference to the Govern-
ment of the Czar. Of the navel power of
Russia we have no dread so long as the empire is
confined within its present maritime limits. But
when we find the Government of Petersburgh en-
deavouring to extend its maritime frontier at one and
the same time on the banks of the Caspian and on the
confines of the Baltic and German Ocean, it becomes
our duty to draw the attention of Englishmen to efforts
so restless and so ambitious, and, we may add, so in-
consistent with that settlement of Europe as the basis
of the treaty of Vienna to which Russian authorities
so often refer. We are not in the least disposed to
deny the obligations under which our
.neighbours the m
Dimes lie to the Russian Government a recent pas-