The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1884-04-03
The Mob Spirit.

s The dispatches from Cincinnati yes
5erday morning indicated the preva-
Ience of mob spirit in that center OF
political purity and high
moral ideas fully as active and law
defying as any which was ever exhlb-
tied in Texas upon similar great pro-
vocation. We chronicle these occur
rences only with infinite regret. They
that relaxation of the moral
fibre of the people from which we are
to expect the gravest evils in the fu-
ture. 1t is the mastery of the mob
over law and order. 1t is dangerous
sentiment and the one out of
which has grown all the evils
attending the lawless exhibitions OF
the age. Berner had committed a |
great crime. He deserved death and
the court and jury before whom he
was tried were wofully direlict in
duty. But two wrongs do not make
right. If that court held the lines
of duty with a relaxed and nerveless
hand 1t is no excuse for the mob Ia
king up the cause. There are legal
ways of proceeding quite as effective
as that of mob murder. In mob JUS
tice the innocent suffer as well as the
guilty. The attempted burning of the
Cincinnati Jail involves the loss OF lives
not forfeited by crime. The whole theo-
nv of human and divine law is that
it is better that ninety-nine
guilty men escape than that one inno-
cent man be hanged. The only hope
that society can have in the future is
in its absolute and unquestioned ODE
dience to all laws, both good and bad.
Bad laws are easily amended, but
while they are in force they must be
respected, as though they had come
with all the sanction of the just.
In Texas we have had many exhi-
billions of the malign energy Of the
mob. Good never came out of sin
gle instance. We can recall but one
case in all our experience where mob
law would have been right, and that
was in the Rothschild case. Mon
ey in bright yellow tides
swept in and did away
with law, choked human horror and
purchased federation for the blacklist
murderer and the most complacent
court which ever stood full in the eye
of an indignant and outraged public.
| But even in this instance the mob
could only have acted with outrage
while the scoundrel was in the hands
of the court. After he had been
turned loose his blood would
have been a grateful sacrifice to the
Just passions Of an outraged people.
In the main the people are law
abiding. Much of the lawless-
ness exhibited in this state
has been the result of tAe
leadership of bad men; men on
oppsite sides of some fatal or deadly
fued. Rival cattle thieves meet and
contend for the mastery, and the
weaker are lynched. Ibis day has
passed away, and such things are
rarely or never heard of now. But
in the grey past-and not so very
grey, either-this cause of extra-judi-
cial execution was the most prolific.
Its gallows fruit hung on many tree
in fair Texas. The groans it occa-
stoned echo back to us now. The
ears it caused to well up are still
falling. but in chastened and grad
ually diminishing stream. Soon it
will be recalled only as one Of the
dreadful dreams of the past.
The only safety for either Ohio or
Texas. is to stand steadily by the law
! Yield nothing to the mob. Place no
single one of the dearer interests of
society in the keeping of men whose
reason has succumbed to the passions
of the hour. God has given us, in the
plenitude of His vast mercy, grand
country. lie has given us His laws
upon which to form our codes. He
has said, Whose sheddeth mans
blood by man shall his blood be
she'd" Let murder be punished by
death. That is what it means, not
death at the hands of the mob; but
death at the hands of an outraged
law and its official ministers.
1t has become the fashion these
days to snCer and scott at Gods law
We pay the penalty in having our
own laws disregarded. our own people
murdered, and in being compelled to
hide our faces in shame because, with
all our boosted civilization, we are yet
not wise enough to do even and eX-
act justice. The laws terrors are
only for the poor, while the rich slayer
of his fellow man walks away from
the scene of his butcheries unscatbed,
The malign power of money
must be destroyed and when
it is men will have the same
respect for law here in the
west that is found in England, where
a ducal crown is insufficient to protect
the red hand. But all classes of Am
erican citizens must frown upon the
justice dispensed by the mob. 1t is
fatal. 1t is wicked. 1t is worse, it is
impolitic to give over to the mob the
dispensation of that justice which is
only just when it is legally dispensed.