The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1903-08-05
LYNCH VS.. LAW.

The following are a few
excerpts from an article in this weeks
Independent written by Governor Win
field T. Durbin of Indiana:
The methods of extenuation adopt
ed by a few public and many private
apologists for lynch law have become
familiar The awfulness of the crime
and the outraged sense of justice 1t
arouses are pictured in palliation,
But the essential issue raised by the
rioters is not between the mob and its
victim, but between the mob and the
law The law is as much outraged by a
lynching based on heinous crime as
by a lynching without provocation
"There are instances without number
in which the mob spirit, once aroused,
has led to the pursuits of objects en-
tirely foreign to that which brought it
into being. The sweep of the mob
spirit through community is like the
rush of water through sewer-it
collects and losses into the flood al
that is vilest in its pathway, and be-
fore the course of the current is run
the filth is on the surface.
AS TO COURTS DELAY.
The delays of the courts and the
discrimination of officials in the ex-
ecution of the laws is often assigned as
an explanation, if not in palliation of
the mob spirit. By whom are judicial
and executive officers chosen? By
whom we're the delays of the law DELHI
erately decreed? They are in large
part the safeguards reared by the peo-
pie themselves for their own protec-
tion against summary procedure.
What member of an American mob
charged with crime would look upon
these safeguards otherwise than as
essential accomplishments of free gov
ernment?
'Let us place against these apologies
for mob rule few essential and we'll
established pr nciples. No govern
ment can endure with the court and
the mob seeking to exercise identical
functions. Either the supremacy OF
the law must be established beyond
question of free rein must be given to
the fury of riotous assemblages engag-
ed in trampling all law into the dust.
Anarchy and constitutional govern
ment may not thrive within the same
geographical limits. If guilty men
are to be hanged or burned by good
citizens to-day under the summary
procedure of brute force, then innocent
men may be hanged or burned to-mor-
row by bad citizens operating under
the same warrant.
eff the mob spirit is to become the
national spirit, and, being contagious,
it must either be stamped out or it's Ill
innate supremacy conceded; then the
next step in our political "develop
ment," if history teaches anything,
will be the rule of that dictator who
proves himself to be the best leader OIL
mobs.
The man who invokes violance in
an assault on the law must be struck
down by the laws strong arm. The
sheriff and his deputles who employ
the rifle and the shotgun in defense Of
a prisoner whom mob seeks to muir.
der, the miiitiamen who cooperate
with them in the laws behalf, are as
much soldiers in the cause of liberty as
any patriot who fought at Bunker Hill
or Kings Mountain, and those officials.
sworn to the execution of the law, who
yield to themob spirit in such an emer.
gency are guilty of as base poltroony
as the veriest coward who ever fled
from a2battlefeld.
Let the American people take to
heart the issues involved in an appeal
to mob law and the mob spirit will in
stantly disappear as national phen-
omenon. We need only national a.
Weakening to what this issue implies.
We need a strengthening of the arm
of authority. widening and deepening
respect for the law by its enforcement
without fear or favor. Record Her
aid.