The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1903-09-01
Lynching is Anarchy.

AHAOhJ - Cu0 reJ6cC1On OF government. LII
does not consist only of the rawlings of the red
mouthed professors of the cult or plotting
against kings and presidents, or in the actual kill
ing of the head of the State. All that is neces-
sary to produce anarchy is for any number of
persons to ~conspire to overthrow the law, or ig-
more it by their conduct. Sovereignty in this
country does not inhere in persons, but in the
codes and statutes enacted by the people.
1t was anarchy in Georgia when the mob at
Newton, in Baker County, on Thursday night,
raided the jail and lynched three murderers safe
ly imprisoned and awaiting trial before a lawful
and reliable court and jury. While it is true that
there appears little if any doubt of their guilt,
that fact alone should have inspired good citizens
to await with patience and confidence the outcome
of a lawful trial.
There are delays of the law that are often ag-
gravating to the impulsive element among men,
but it were better to keep courts in session all the
year through in every county in the United
States to give speedy trial to accused men than
that one such affair as that at Newton should oc-
cur in this or any other commonwealth of our
enlightened country.
The only excuse that can possibly be pleaded in
justification Of lynch law is that the State is dis
banded, the officials dead and the laws suspended
by an interregnum in which the natural rights of
men take the place of the orderly regulations of
organized society.
1t is astonishing to consider how far and fast
the spirit of anarchy is travelling in this country.
Not many years ago only brutal rapist and MUIR
derers of helpless women and children enraged the
people to these unlawful methods of vengeance.
Now homicides of the ordinary types, the rob
bing of houses, the stealing of goods and chattels
are in one place and another enough to congre-
gate a mob and cause a popular hanging or burn
ing.
It is no longer sectional, if it ever was, but is a
nationally difused crime and a growing menace
to the good order and civilized procedures of the
nation at large.
1t must be stopped! Any further increase of
its virulence and caprices will put in jeopardy
almost any man, white or black, justly or falsely
accused of crime. Society must be protected
from the recidivism of barbarism. Government
must be respected and its laws obeyed. Justice
must be speedy and exact. The whole fbric of
our civilization totters on an insecure base when
every arm and sovereignty is broken through by
irrational, irresponsible and blo~ody-minded mobs.
There is wisdom enough in our States to legis-
late such penalties upon this brand of anarchy
as to make it dangerous for any man, other than
a.madman or a besotted idiot, to join a l~ynching
party. Otherwise our methods of government
are a confessed failure. What is needed is a
public opinion in every State that will demand
such penalties and their enforcement at what
ever cost of life and money.
The time when the lynching of a certain breed
of brutes could be winked at because of ~satlstac-
ton that punishment came to him quickly and to
the utmost, has given way to a time when the
greater peril to society is the mob itself that
does the work of vengeance. Against the growth
of that eveil the best sense of the nation needs to
combine and enforce an adequate protection.-At-