Weekly Arizona journal-miner. [volume] (Prescott, Ariz.) 1903-1908, 1903-08-19
ROOSEVELT ON LYNCHING.

The following excerpts from a re-
cent letter written by President
Roosevelt to Governor Durbin, of In
diana, on the subject of lynching.
gives in very plain language the posi-
tion of the executive on these dis
graceful proceedings:
Permit me to thank you as an
American citizen for the way in which
you have INDICATED the majesty of
the law by your recent action in re-
ference to lynching. feel, my dear
sir, that you have made all men your
debtors who believe, as all far seeing
men must, that the we'll being, indeed
the very existence, of the republic
depends upon that orderly liberty I'M
der the law which, is as incompatible
with mob violence as with any form
of depsotism. OF course, mob viol-
ence is simply one form of anarchy,
and anarchy is now, as it always has
been, the hand maiden and forerunner
of tyranny.
alarm over the growth of Iynching in
this country.
''Men who have been guilty of
crime like rape or murder should be
visited with swift and certain punish
ment and the just effort made by the
courts to protect them in their rights
should under no circumstances be
perverted into permitting any mere
technicality to avert or delay their
punishment. The substantial rights
of the prisoner to fair trial must of
course be guaranteed, as you have so
justly insisted, but they should be
made subject to this guarantee: the
law must work swiftly and surely and
all the agents of the law should real
ize the wrong they do when they per-
init justice TO be delayed or thwarted
for technical or insufficient reasons.
We must show that the law is adequate !
to deal with crime by freeing it from
every vestige of technicaIity and de-
lay.
Whoever in any part of our coun-
try has ever taken part in lawlessly |
putting to death a criminal by the
dreadful torture of fire must forever
after have the awful spectacle of his
own handiwork scared into his brain
and soul. He can never again be the
same man.
"This matter of lynching would be
terrible thing even if it stopped |
with the lynching of men guilty of
the inhuman and hideous crime of
rape; but as matter of fact the law
lessness of this type never does stop
and never can stop in such fashion. |
Every violent man in the community
is encouraged by every case of lynch
ing in which the lynchers go unpun-
ished to take the law into his own |
hands whenever it suits his own con-
venience. In the same way the use of
torture by the mob in certain cases
is sure TO spread until it is applied
more or less Unfortunately in other
cases. The spirit of lawlessness grows
with what it feeds on, and when mobs
with impunity lynch criminals for one
cause they are certain to begin to
lynch real or alleged criminals for
other causes.
Surely no patriot can fail to see
the fearful EQUALIZATION and debase-
ment which the indulgence of such
spirit and such practices inevitably
portend.
''The corner stone of this republic.
as of all free governments, is respect
for and obedience to the law. Where
we permit the law to be defied or =
evaded, whether by rich man or poor r
man, by black man or white man. we !
are by just so much weakening the
bonds of our civilization and increas-
ing the chances of its overthrow and
of the substitution therefor of sys-
TEN in which there shall be violent
alterations of anarchy and tyranny" I