The record-union., 1893-11-16
INDEFENs1B1L1rY OF LYNcH1Ne.

ENTHUSIASTICALLY OE I1NCdINO u
Judge L. E. Bleckley, Chief Justice OF
the Supreme Court of Georgia, has an
essay in the November Forum upon
negro outrages in the South, in which he
holds that no kind or degree of provoca-
ton by the blacks can justify lynching.
This is in all cases an undeniable truth.
Wrongs may justify revolution, but that
order of redress is not to be classed with
lynchings, no matter how large and un-
animous the community that engages
In it.
The Judge puts it well when he says
that the brief and bloody code of lynch
law, translated into plain language, reads
thus: "Let past crime be met with
present crime in order that future crime
may be prevented"
This doctrine, as he asserts, no organ
lied society can tolerate and live. He
adds with emphasis an important truth,
that the true cause of lynching is not the
provocation ITSELF but failure to discern
clearly and realize vividly that provoca-
ton is utterly irrelevant, either as justifi-
cation or mitigation. If. says Judge
Bleckley, this great truth was generally
accepted, there would be no public
opinion behind lynchers to afford them
moral support, or encourage them with
the hope of immunity. We doubt if ever
before the fundamental truth of the sub
ject was so well or so forcibly phased.
The frequency of lynching in this age
of our country negatives the belief and
the hope that this barbaric, anarchic
wrong is dying out with our advance
upon the lines of civilization. 1t will not
probably cease until, as the essayist puts
it, men are so morally sensitive as to re-
gard it as criminal as is the grossest form
of murder.
To illustrate the absurdity and abhor-
rent character of retaliation, murder for
murder as means of prevention, Judge
Bleckley asks if retorting rape for rape
would be accepted by society with COM
placency2 Why is it not precisely as abb
horrent to US when murder is employed
as retaliation for rape? The Justice
answers: "For the reason that by mis-
conception of the part played by provoca-
ton, the killing of the ravisher is re-
garded by many as only technically a
murder, and not as a moral murder at
allP"
It is then because our moral sensibili-
ties are not sufficiently cultivated, or
that they are blunted. that we excuse
that which we cannot by any honest code
justify. This proceeds from false dis
tinction men make between a murder SO
defined by moral and social codes, and
murder we are prone to regard as only
technically criminal.
There can be no escape fro N the rule
the Justice lays down, that if we are to
have law at all and maintain it, we must
recognize the ethical as well as the legal
duty of keeping on the inside of it at all
times and under all circumstance, alb
solutely and without exception.
The lecture ought to do good which this
eminent Southerner reads to the people
of the South upon the Stiffness of their
error of race elimination and recrimina-
ton, one race recouping with the griev-
ance of provocation when the other COM
plains of lynching, and the latter recoup-
ing with the grievance of lynching when
the former complains of provocation.
So far from being manly, it is childish
instead of operating as restraint, the pol
icy is provocative of crime; instead o.
terrorizing it only inflames. To punish
wrongfully for acting wrong is contra
dictory, absurd. That which the law per.
mits to be done in self-defense. or in de-
Tense of others, may be done and that
only. and that is the beginning and the
end of the whole matter.
Whoever contributes to the work o.
convincing men of these truths serve:
his race well. Whoever aids the upbuild
ing in American communities of senti.
ment that regards lynching as wholly in
defensible, as savage, anarchistic. unrea.
soning and silly, contributes more TO tht
real defenses of society and to the preven.