Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1878-10-14
MOB VIOLENCE IND THE LAW.

on Friday night will have tendency to at
| tract renewed attention to the lax enforce
ment of the laws and the tardy administration
of justice by the courts, and raise the ques-
ton of whether the people are justified in
taking the law into their own hands and
executing that justice which is denied by the
laws and the courts. It cannot be denied
that the punishment prescribed by law for
ofenses of the character for which these
negroes were hung is wholly inadequate. If
any crime merits death, swift, certain and
exemplary, that of rape does, and it makes
no difference that in this particular instance
the victims were lewd women. It is crime,
too, that our very nature demands should be
punished without delay and in a summary
manner. The law should be instant, unre-
lenting, rigorous in the enforcement of its
penalty, but these requisites the law does
not possess. The only remedy, therefore,
which the people possess is that afforded
by mob. 1t is to be regretted, however,
that mobs are too often unreasoning and
hasty in arriving at conclusions and not in
frequently visit punishment upon innocent
persons. If they could by any possibility be
made infallible judges of the guilt or limo
cence of those accused of such crimes, they
would be wholly defensible and commend
able.
Many claim that mob is an outrage upon
law; that it commits crime by avenging
one. But if the law is impotent to properly
avenge the grossest of outrages, does it de-
serve to be respected? Are criminals to go
UNPUBLISHED simply for regard of the law?
There is a sense of justice inherent in the
human breast that is superior to written law,
and when that is outraged we lose all regard
for courts and statutes. The fact that of
late years the courts have often been simply
the media through which known malefactors
have been turned loose to prey upon society,
and the further fact that governors have ex-
ercised the clemency with which they
have been invested on behalf of the most
notorious of Grim mails, have brought the
public in some localities to realization that
their only safety is through the organization
of vigilance committees for tie punishment
of offenders against life and property. Year
after year the laws are becoming more lenient
towards evil doors, year after year the execu-
tives of the several States increase the num-
Der of their pardons, and year after year
courts extend exceptional favors to those
charged with crimes. The lawmakers and
those who administer the laws are therefore
responsible for the frequency with which the
people take the law into their own hands.
man whose wife or sister is ravished by
some tiend knows of a certainty that the man
will never be adequately punished for his Of
Tense, and that the probabilities are all in
favor of an entire escape. He is not only
justifable, but it is his duty under
the circumstances, to wreak vengeance
upon the perpetrator of the crime by his own
hand. If courts would maintain respect for
the laws, they must more rigidly enforce
them. If lawmakers desire the people to
obey the laws they must cease making loop
holes through which malefactors can escape
the just punishment of their crimes. Mobs
in general are to be deprecated, but it is not
to be denied that occasions arise when thew
alone are adequate to the proper administra-
ton of that justice which is demanded by
every sense of our being. Such an occasion
seems to have arisen in Indiana, and none
will question but the wretches who expiated
their crime in such terrible manner re-
ceived only their just desserts.