The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-10-11
THE OMAHA LYNCHING.

THE most fatal lesson you can teach
people is that they must look for justice
outside of the law" So said Sir WILLIAM
HARCoURT a few years ago in a speech at
York, England. 1t was the announcement
of great truth, back of which stands as
proof the history of all nations. The laws
delay very frequently begets an impa-
thence in community where some great
crime has been committed, and the guilty
perpetrator of it stands shielded for the
time being behind the forms of law. Just
ice does sometimes miscarry; and the
guilty, through some technicality of the
law, sometimes escapes the just penalty of
his misdeeds. All this is calculated to
exasperate community excited by the per
petratlon of great crime, and not infre-
quently they have taken the case into
their own hands and become the direct
ministers of their own vengeance 1t is
not deserved their fate, and it is not on
their account that these popular uprislngs
are to be deplored; but on account of the
demoralizing effect their doings have upon
the community
In order that the liberty of the Individual
might be made as secure as possible, the
law has surrounded those accused of
crime with even chances to establish their
innocence by providing that they shall not
be judged guilty until they are proven to
be SO beyond every reasonable doubt, be-
fore jury of their peers and of the vicin-
age where the crime was committed. This
is wise provision and the chief bulwark
of personal freedom. No amount of DELAY.
no number of postponements of trial
or executions can justify an in
vasion Of these safety provisions thrown
round the Individual. Still more censur-
able, however, must be the conduct of
community where there has not been and
is not likely to be any delay in the admin
istration of Justice; aud where the people
on the very day that they violated the law
to crafty popular vengeance, had wit
messed the execution of criminal, as an
earnest Of the effectiveness OF their gov
eminent. Such were the condi tions under
which the people Of the city of Omaha took
the law into their own hands, and under
circumstances Of the utmost savagery took
q nCSlo LINN PiiSOu dha IiuhS Viii III SIS
public streets. 1t is true the negro was q
brute and had been guilty of crime a
thousand times worse han murder; he had
outraged little girl but five years old,
from the effects of which she died. A crime
worthier of a deeper damnation can
not be named, but that does not
Justify community in leaping over
the law to wreak its vengeance on the
wretch 1t may be said that the black
brute outraged every sense of humanity.
and was deserving the su mmary treatment
he received at the hands of the infuriated
mob. All that is true, and there is not a
man living that would have the least feel
ing OF pity for the monster that could com
NIT such a crime. 1t is not what was done
| to the negro that is so censurable as what
was done to the law by such an uprising
that is to be deplored. Such proceedings
if not condemned and the evils likely to re-
suit from them pointed out, are calculated
to beget a contempt for the process of law.
which might go far towards dlsrupting
government. 1t therefore becomes the
duty of the press to warn the community