Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1903-04-29

cational light in Boston. Boston
is not to be followed impli-
city in all things, but in the execu-
tion of Prof. Webster she set an example
of unfiinching firmness in administering
justice that many other cities might we'll
take into serious consideration. The ex-
ample was felt and commented on every
where where the papers were read. The
common comment was that trial by jury
In murder cases, however common the
failure elsewhere, was not a failure in
Boston. 1t tended consequently to raise
courts in-public estimation and to dimin-
ish crime, especially tho crime of murder.
y. About two years after the famous
Webster trial in Boston there was in
San Francisco, as the result of the gold
excitement in California, such rush of
the lawless class and adventurous from
all over the world to that city, that the
legally constituted courts were utterly
po,Werless to control them. Thieves,
robbers, murderers and all manner of
dissolute people ran riot. Property and
life we're at the mercy of the lawless. In
self-defence the law-abiding people or
ganlzed vigilance committees in every
section Of the city, with central regula-
tion court to which all guilty or aus-
pected persons we're brought for trial.
executed by hanging on the same night
on which their guilt was established.
Only eight or ten we're executed, and in
short time the great majority of the
lawless class had departed for parts un-
known. The disease in the body politic
had become desperate, and its cure could
only be effected by heroic remedy.
J In few months order was restored, the
otgitantes disbanded, and the legally
constituted courts resumed control, and
from that time San Francisco has been
as we'll governed apparently as other
cities of her size farther east.
Unless crime is punished with more
certainty by the civil powers the time is
coming on apace when San Franoisco's
remedy of 1851 will be resorted to in
many cities in the middle west, as we'll
as in some east of the Alleghenies.
Coming events cast their shadows be-
fore" The number of homicides re-
corded in the daily papers is startling.
The man who can read the daily por-
trayal OF new and moro shocking crimes
under display types, without seeing the
shadows broadening and darkening, is a
dull interpreter Of the signs of the times.
The budding and blossoming of the fruit
tree" are no moro certain harbingers of
returning summer, than growth in crime,
without the will or ability to punish it
according to its demerits, is sign of the
condition preceding the peoples arising
in their might and attempting to do for
themselves what the law fails to do for
them. The enforcement of the law will
put a stop to the disgraceful crime of
!!ynching. This is illustrated in the fol-
lowing news item clipped from a late
issue of the Atlanta News:
LEGAL HANGINGs STOP LYNCHINas.
Jackson, Miss, April 13.-The official
records of crime for the four months 80
far this year bear out the statement that
lynching never occurs when the courts
are active in performing their duty.
There has not been case of lynching
this year in the State, and IL is believed
that this is due to the fact that the num-
Der of legal sentences to death by hang
ing in this State for ths past vear vuaa