Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1883-06-21

all pride in its profession? Have the judges
sunk too low to regard the purity oil the
ermiue and the dignity of the bench? When
PROPOSITIONS are defended for weeks that are
so baseless as to be in ulting TO tbs court, az
they are outrageous 10 common sense, have
our Judges so fallen below the ancient dig
nity of their Office, are they go disre.
gardful Of the g: cred claims Of justice, that
they cannot support the high station they
occupy, and refuse TO have equity exchanged
for tradition, sOphistry, form, and verbal re-
insmenis, aad subileties that darken truth
and degrade virtue? Men will try tricks,
and delays, and misrepresentation, and
twisting of words, and pretentious disputings
of the best known facts and clearest prirci-
pies, but has the Judge no more sense OF his
duty, no more regard for the triumph
Of truth and right than, not only 10
permit such things unrebuked, but permit
them to be repeated and expanded and
heaped up and sWelled out until days grow
into weeks, and weeks stretch into weary
months? In other lands, where justice is held
up at least as purely and as constantly as
with us, trials do not drag and linger on
until. the jury in the end squit the guilty as
the shortest way of escaping from their long
tbIaldom, that has become 30 hateful that
any thing is had resource TO that will put an
end to what has become a torment. That
while other things have advanced, our law
administration has receded, is evident by the
position ii occupies in public dises!eem. The
courts are depriving themselves OF public
confidence. Their evasions and denials of
justice are robbing them of the public faith.
80 little is law relied upon to do justice, that
a community every now and then proclaims
itself as the corrector of legal injustice, as
the svenger of wrongs the courts have sane
toned. Departing of obtaining right from
men who have been sworn and consecrated to
do right and defend right, such communities
take upon themselves the sacred offices OF
witness, jury, and judge, and in wild but hon
est appeal TO the public sense OF equity, they
outrage law and proclaim the shameful con-
dition into which legal administration has
faller, by Selling murderers and violators
NhN bhchl ~ VIC OSu5h VI AoN1P
post. Lynching is a horrible procurement
OF the most sacred elements of authoritative
government, yet it vindicates, at least in in
tention, the holy attributes Of justice which
courts have degraded and dragged in the
dust. The increase Of lynchiug, the way it
is penetrating settled communities, is heavy
condemnation Of system in which "the
criminal has too many safeguards and the
public too few" We have law but not JUS
tice. Such is the proclamation every lynch
Jog case makes before God aud man. The
American people are not cruel or ineffective,
and when they condemn American Law, and
American law administration, with dead
corpses to emphasizs the condemnation, there
is certainly change impending. Ii there is
not the ability and virtue among the adher-
ents of our legal system to purge from their
institutions the venom that infects and the
wrong that degrades them, reform, sweeping
and fierce, will come and wipe out in just
indignation evils that are becoming too
heavy TO be borne.