The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-05-03
A DRIFT TO BARBARIsM.

cusable acts of lynch law:
Murders and other outrages by mobs are COM
mittsd more and more frequently under cir
cumstances OF greater cruelty and with wider
geographical distribution time goes on, de-
yeloping those moral forces and social coudi-
lions so fondly relied upon to extinguish the
spirit of lawIessness and confirm the reign OF or
der II il absurd TO speak of these enormous
crimes any longer as mere outbreaks of local
excitement, due to lack OF confidence IN the
courts. They are local symptoms OF general
moral disorder pervading every part OF our
social system. The ineficisncy of the courts is
itself symptom of the same constitutional dis
ease.
These are solemn and significant words
coming from leading paper of San Fran
cisco, o city that in 1852 and 1856 was
obliged to organize popular tribunals for
the protection of life and property. Those
who undertake to quote the Vigilance
Committee" Of San Francisco as pre-
cedent for the present barbecues of bar
barity and blsckguardism that disgrace
our reputation for intelligence, humanity
and self-restraint before the civilized world,
are either ignorant or disingenuous. In
all the proceedings of the San Francisco
vigilance committee Of 1856 there was no
faint of mobocratic violence or passion or
political prejudice; their deliberations
were as calm, dignified and self-restrained
as those of the continental congress; they
comprised men of all religions, of all races
and nativities. OF all parties. They stood
for 1000 citizens Of a city Of 5000
people, for its integrity, its intelli-
gence, its conservatism, its piety,
its virtue and its wealth, and from
first to last these men acted with so
much dignity, patriotism, self-restraint
and sagacity that during their whole reign
OF more than four months the committee
was not guilty of a single act of reckless.
unjustifabls violence. They could not be
called a mob, for outside of its criminals
and corrupt classes the whole city was be-
hind them; the whole state was behind
them. They established their own court,
hung but four men, who were all given q
slow, careful, formal trial, with counsel,
witnesses and jury; they formally banished
thirty and indirectly forced 200 ruifians to
leave the state. They deliberated a, week
before acting and in their address to the
people of California they argued that
when corrupt officials, governor. judges,
sheriffs, etc., who have fraudulently seized
the reins of authority. designedly thwart
the execution of the laws and avert pun
ishment from the VIGOROUSLY guilty, the
power they usurp by fraud and violence
reverts back to the people from whom it
was wrested by fraud and lawless force.
In San Francisco the ballot boxes had
false bottoms; the inspectors and judges
of election were ex-convicts; several of the
judges of the courts were ex-convIcts; the
sheriff, the constables, the police, the Jail
ers were ex-gamblers, convicts and prize
fighters; the votes of the majority
were nullified by ballots stuffed
in at midnight or by false courts
of judges and inspectors at noon
day; offices were sold to the highest bid
der; DULLES were employed to destroy tally
lists and ballot boxes by force and brighten
peaceable citizens from the polls. Felons
controlled the public funds and property:
an enormous public debt was created; the
jury box was tempered with by the sheriff !;
peaceable citizens who protested or re-
sisted were beaten, MANNED or shot down
with impunity, and the heroic editor of
the only honest press of the city was muir
dered in the streets by an ex-convict who
had been made supervisor by stuffed ballot
boxes. The vigilance committee of 1856
was not mob at all; it was the uprising
Of whole city of 5000 people in rebellion
against anarchy, entrenched behind the
forms Of law. San Francisco, backed by
the whole public opinion of the state of
California, deliberately reassumed the
civic powers, which had been abused and
prostituted by those who had stolen them
under the forms of law, with a dignity,
calmness. sagacity and self-restraint that
has no parallel in history. There was no
act of excess, of vindictiveness, of precipi-
fancy. Thew calmly, carefully and
conscientiously selected court.
jury; they provided counsel :;
they examined witnesses; they did not
abuse their power, and the record of their
four months absolute rule was unstained
by single act of impurity, seliishness,
passion, injustice or cowardice. They rose
instantly into a dignihed and powerful
tribunal, and they disbanded with midi
minished dignity at the very height of
their power. Patriotic necessity, not
mobocratie passion or frenzy. forced their
rebellion; this necessity over they at once
disbanded.
To quote the record of the San Fran
cisco vigilance committee of 1856 as a pre-
cedent for the barbarous resort to lynch
law without the slightest excuse or ex-
tenuation Of public necessity, because of a
stuffed ballot box, false count, O venal
court and sheriff, with the whole admins
trative machinery of the law in the hands
Of constables and police who were ex-con.
victs. felous and gamblers. is an insult 10
every intelligent, lsw-abiding American.
There is no more identity between the
present brutal craze for lynch law at the
slightest provocation, all over the country.
and the action of the vigilance committee
of 1885 than there is between the revolt of
the American colonies against the crown
and the bomb-throwing anarchists of
Europe.
Suppose when Jeff Davis was captured
BY our Federal troops he had been lynched
by lswless soldiers on the ground that
Lincoln had been assassinated, and that
Davis very likely would escape trial and
eonviction for treason, as he did Suppose
that he had been taken out of the hands of
his military guard and lynched by party
Of infIriate Union citizens. who deemed
him worthy OF death and would not trust