The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1858-09-13
BALTIMORE.
MONDAY. SEPTEMBER Is. 1858.


receiving very liberal application, and yet more
liberal Interpretation on the part of some of our
contemporaries. By virtue of that theory the
Staten Islanders burnt, the other day. a hospital
full of SICK and by the same theory the New York
Herald justifes and approves the act. Upon the
outrage itself and its authors we have already COM
mented as we thought proper. We have con-
demned in fitting terms-if words were adequate
to express the measure of our condemnation-the
conduct Of the authorities who stood itamely by
and suffered this great crime against society and
humanity ITSELF to be deliberately consummated
There is no disgracesrs AND the power of public
opinion to nfct, which we would not gladly see
visited upon each and every one of these unworthy
servants of the people. We cannot exactly acqul-
esce in the suggestion of Northern contemporary,
that Staten Island ought to be sheed, as Jiddah
was the other day, for a less considerable offence
but we should rejoice to see every man who had a
hand in the proceeding sentenced to the peniten-
tiary, and the ringleaders to the gallows We
should like, moreover, to have the sentence
executed without any interposition of Execu-
tive clemency. If, however, we would thus
severely visit the actual participants in this
barbarous outrage-the men whom passion and in
terest and evil counses and their own fears of con-
tagion and death, betrayed into its commission,
what punishment should we reserve for those who,
after the thing DONE in calmer moments, and
uninfuenced by any of those local and personal
considerations that operated so powerfully and so
fatally upon the minds of the people of Staten
Island, deliberately justify and applaud the deed
What shall we say of the course of public
journal, which claims and we presume rightfully,
to possess the largest circulation and the greatest
influence of any press in the country, in thus
sanctonng the most high-handed rebellion against
the laws, and greatest outrage upon humanity,
that our age and country has witnessed? Such is
the course of the New York Herald. In its issue
of Thursday or Friday last, more than week
after the burning of the hospital, when even the
public authorities had been slammed into sense of
their misconduct and of the enormity of the
crime that had been committed, and were en-
deavoring by tardy exhibition of zeal and ac-
tivity to atone, if possible for their former SUI
pneness, the Herald publishes an elaborate plea in
justification of the arson The article is too long
for insertion entire otherwise we should be content
to re-pubsh it bodily, without note or comment
of our own and leave the poison to be its own an
tidote The Herald compares the destruction of
the Quarantine buildings to that of the tea in
New York harbor, by the patriots in l773, and of
the stamps, at the Bowling Green in 1865, and
even suggests resemblance between the act of
RAY ToNPKINs and his fellow incendiaries, and
that of the English barons who at Runnvmede
wrested the Great Charter from the hands of King
JOHN. 1t assumes las historical and philosophic
truth that most popular commissions have had their
'orlgln In some gross outrage or oppression of the
people, and though the outbreaks may have been
Suppressed they have only been so after proper
concessions to the outraged party This pro-
position which amounts to n direct assumption
that in popular commissions" or Outbreaks,
the presumption is in favor of the riot
ers, and against the laws, it subsequent
ly re-assers in terms yet more explicit. 1t states,
that there is ''evidence enough that popular COM
emotions most usually arise from the conviction
'that the existing laws afford no redress; and in
ga country like ours, where the people are sover~
''egns, and rule merely for their convenience by
deputy, 1t is not surprising that with these con-
''victons, they Sometimes endeavor to right their
Gown wrongs" Here we have the doctrine
OF popular sovereignty broadly presented Our
government is assumed to be pure de-
mocracy-an absolute despotism of num-
bers, the people merely ruling F'for their con-
venience, by deputy" and with the reserved right
ofdspensing at any time with the formalities of law,
which, likewise, exist merely ''for convenience
and of redrcssing their own wrongs in their own
way. We need hardly say that such a doctrine
legalizes at once that primitive and summary ad-
ministration of justice known as LYNCH law, COM
pletely sanctions those remarkably effective though
somewhat turbulent manifestations of popular
power, called-Vigilance Committees, and recog-
nizes mobs and mob-vioence as part of our ordi
nary system OF government, and among the most
beneficial institutions of the country. After such
declaration, we need not be surprised to find that
proper regard for the laws is looked upon by the
Herald with exceeding disfavor, as being inconsis-
tent with the character of free people. We are
told that 'there are no governments in
the world so fond of the maxim stare decisis, as
'those which are..despotc-none so profoundly i'm
oppressed with the propriety of obeying the laws"
''The greatest sticklers for law,' it is added,
''are those who gain most by their severity"
sand all our expressions, all wrongs are re-
ferred to the operation and administration of the
laws. In short, more dangerous and incendiary
effuson We have never read, that is the whole ar
ticle in question. 1t openly approves arson preach
es rebellion, and justifes treason. Bad and I'M
scrupulous as we have always known the Herald
to be, it goes step beyond anything we had be-
fore read in its columns. If possible it is greater
outrage upon public decency than the one which
it was written to palliate and defend. To refute
the detestable doctrine it inculcates were work
of supererogation; to expose it is enough After
reading such extracts as we have given, few of
our readers, we presume, will be willing to con-
cede to the Herald what it says of itself-that it
is mot the advocate of mobs or mob-laws" We
are quite sure that none of them would apply to
the case of the Staten Island outrage, as it does
the sentiment, that ''when q great and suffering
community break out in an act of selfpreserva-
on, it is due to them, to the age to the spirit of
1.-THE age, and our democratic institutions, to pause
before we JOIN the condemnatory throng of YER
"balists, text lawyers and office holders,
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