The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-08-16
SUPREME COURT JUSTICE
DISCUSSED MOB SPIRIT
Weeks Closing Address at Chautauqua Delivered
BY Judge John Woodward

the same period only five were execut-
ed by the sheriff for all offenses.'
Lynching Not a Preventive.
During the same period of fourteen
years, marked by this lawlessness, the
same authority tells us that the num-
Der of murders has increased twofold,
manslaughter fourfold and other
crimes about 20 per cent. indicating
clearly, it would seem, that the true
purpose of punishment, the safety and
welfare of society, is not prompted by
this resort to mob violence.
THE truth is, and we are making
progress when we recognize the truth
that we are all too careless of our civic
duties; we are too prone to neglect
them. We patronize, support and en-
courage fiippant press; nothing is
more COMMON even among newspa-
pers, which class themselves as con-
sentative, and who berate the sensa-
tionalism of the yellow Journals
than to find paragraphs apologizing
for or approving of lynchings.
1--WE find these same papers figuring
out in days, weeks or months the time
that has elapsed in the trial of this
or that criminal, and the work is ap-
proved OF disapproved upon the math-
ematical basis of the time employed,
with references to the fact that the
murderer was poor or rich, and with
the innuendo that this determines the
speed or delay in the administration
of the law.
Wealth no Cause of Delay.
LAS a matter of fact, there is no con-
nection between the delays and the
question of the wealth of the client in
scarcely a single case. Every man who
;aI zRco
is put in command of the resources of
the state, if he does not have them
himself, and he can urge every defense
that is open to any man, and usually
with the aid of the strongest counsel
in the locality of the crime.
1.-The laws delay so much prated about
depends very largely upon the particu-
lar time that the crime was commit
ted, and to the necessities in the prac-
teal administration of the laws in a
jurisdiction which presumes innocence
until guilt is proven.
If speed is, in fact a desirable end
to be accomplished in dealing with
crime; if it is necessary as a conces-
sion to the spirit of savagery which
survives beneath the veneer of civilized
life it is within the power of the men
who make up and support negatively
or positively, the mobs which have ter
rorized and disgraced large areas of
our country, to provide the machinery
by which men charged with crimes
may be railroaded to their DOOM They
may, if they choose, so change the
rules of evidence and the methods of
procedure that every malefactor may
be accused, tried, convicted and pun
ished with neatness and dispatch, amid
the plaudits of a community which
stands ready to accept almost anything
so long as it is rapid, but it may be
doubted If the eXpedient would serve
to lessen the number of crimes or
their righteousness.
Christ Victim of Mob.
Modern scholarship is agreed that
in the great tragedy of the cross the
Saviour of mankind was given all of
the benefits of the rules of Jewish law,
but he could not be protected from the
trial by hue and crp; the mob spirit,
the prejudices of the masses, were ar
rayed against Him, and it is only be-
cause modern Jurisprudence has i'm
proved upon the methods of those times
and given the prisoner the right of
appeal so long as there is a question
of the fairness and legality of his trial,
that the injustice and the wrong of
that conviction are no longer possible,
THE technical rules which are made
use of by the guilty to delay the
day OF execution are the rules which
guarantee to the innocent the reserVa-
ton of their rights, even in the face
az popular clamor, such as has mark
ed the trial of numerous cases in the
city OF New York during the past few
years. when the public press has as