The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1903-02-08

of No-Man,s Land-the panhandle of the
Indian Territory held meeting at Beaver
City and created the last American local
government, the DEGREES of which were
necessarily carried out by rifiemen acting
without true legal authority.
The extent and the physical character
istics of the American territory, and the
hamburger of the American people have
often created the CONDITIONS where order
both as communities and as individuals,
between anarchy on one hand and on the
other order secured by methods contrary
to the statute law And under these
circumstances they have invariably put
down anarchy. 1t is therefore entirely
just to say that the love OF good order
has led in a way to the development of
the lynching habit.
No considera ton Of what We may call
our commendable violations of statute
law can ignore the deeds done by the
patriots in the days before and during
the War of the Revolution.
On Thursday, December, 16 1T3 the
ship Dartmouth. laden with tea, was
lying at her wharf in Boston. The peo-
pie had labored for days and by every
legal method to get her out of the har-
Dor with her cargo on board, and as nigh
came on they were gathered by the thou
sand around the Old Sleuth Meeting
House to consider the matter. While they
waited under the dim light of the can
dies messenger came from the Governor
to say that the last legal resource had
ness Samuel Adams arose and said quiet
~. but distinctly, this meeting can do
nothing more than to save the country I"
A war whoop followed. and fifty, men,
disguised as Indians, emptied the tea into
Boston Harbor.
Says John Fiske in his American Revo-
luton:
For the quiet sublimity of reasonable
but dauntless moral purpose, the heroic
annals of Greece and Rome can show no
greater scene than that which the Old
South Meeting House witnessed on the
day when the tea was destroyed" The
written law had failed them, and they
were almost reluctantly compelled to fall
hack upon the paramount law of self
preservation
fed with statutes Unquestionably, it
was by ''acts of violence and resist
ance to the execution of the law (as the
House of Lords declared) that the Ameri-
can people began their fight for liberty.
The law invaded their natural rights"
and the record of resistance to the exc
cution of law is glorious.
But consider how the ship drifts when
the cable is slipped-how the people, by
dwelling on natural rights as distin-
guished from the rights given by statute
laws. necessarily lost reverence for legal
enactments. They even came to look
upon the safeguards of the law as high
sounding distractions" In the history of
the American continent it appears that
the colonists of Latin blood were con-
tent to learn what was the will of COM
mandante or priest. The British desired.
instead, to learn the law, but when the
British colonist had developed into an
American citizen he asked only. What
is the right of the natter
Most praiseworthy was that mental at
titude in itself, had the habit of thought
of the people to know the right has
come impatience with the legal forms
and restraints absolutely necessary to as
certain the right; and with the growth
of that impatience people have. from
time to time, brushed aside all legal for
mulas, and have adopted direct and ex-
peditious methods of administering JUS
tice''
One might dwell, also, on the influence
exerted on the American habit of thought |
by the all but endless succession of con-
ficts between frontiersmen and Indians. |
But after what has been said already |
it seems unnecessary to do more than |
remind the reader that in these conflicts |
an appeal to the statute law was so rare
that if the cases had any influence what |
ever on public opinion they served rather
to incte the frontiersman to further acts |
of private warfare than to an appeal |
to the courts. The frontiersman took
the law into his own hands" Regardless !
of the statutes he revenged his own in
juries by an indiscrimnating slaughter
of the red men, and the people in the |
applauded him as a hero |
and yet applaud
The fact is that the roots of the Ameri- |
can lynching habit are found in the most |
stirring and momentous events of Aneri- |
can history. These events compelled, or i
seemed to compel, disregard of the stat |
utes, and the habit of thought thus Gre
ated has been perpetuated by the indis- I!
criminate praise that history lavishes on
the nations law-breaking heroes. No
ether civilized people are guilty of lynch |
ing because no others have been developed |
under similar circumstances.
1t is shocking beyond words to think |
that the most abhorrent cruelties of the |
red savages are now repeated in the |
shadow of American schoolhouses. but |
perhaps a study, here merely suggest !
ed. of the origin of the habit of thought |
which makes such utter degradation pos
sible. may help in curing the evil-John |
r. Spears in the New York Evening Post. |
HE WOULDN'T SWEAR.