The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-10-25

orty unless peaceful ana taW-abidinG citizens follow the demands and obey the commands of an element which seems to have lost all respect for laws, human or divine; who care nothing for the rights of others. and who destroy property and take human life for no better reason than that good men wish to conduct their business in their own
 way instead of being governed by the demands ot lawless men who work in
 secrecy and hide their crimes under cover of the night.
 There can be no halfway ground be-
 tween a government of law and a gov
 ernment without law. A stable gov
 ernment cannot be maintained when
 the laws are defed and any members
 of community defy the laws and the
 officers Of the law. and set themselves
 up to pass sentence and execute judg-
 ment on all who displease them and re-
 fuse to be governed by them. There
 was never any moral or legal defense
 for the night rider organizations and
 their acts. When a man or an orgar-
 ization notifies one farmer that he
 shall not sell his crop of tobacco. ar-
 other that he shall not sell his cotton, a ginner that he must not gin the crop
 of his neIghbors, and warn cotton buy CTS to stop buying: and when all these demands are accompanied by threats of
 violence to the persons and property of ali who refuse to take warning, then government win prove farce. unless such defiance of law and order can be suppressed.
 But this condition of. afYairs. bad as 1t Is and threatens to be, is not all ors the worst. AS crime always. grows with what 1t feeds on. so 1t is with this wave that has arisen in various por- tions of the country. Not satisfied with threatening private citizens and their property. the marsuders and crim. lnais are looking for still higher vio- tirns. They are now warning with threats of violence those whose sworn duty 1t Is to define the law. and those who are required to enforce it. and whose. only oftense is that they are living up to their paths and do- inK their duty. oniesrs of the law are warned and threatened not to exes cute the laws against violence. and judges and higher oflcials are warned not to make any effort to arrest of punish these thugs. or try to prevent them from carrying out their nefarious purposes. From endsavoring to terror ize private citizens and sworn ofacsrs of the law they now reach up to high l est. seats and would pull down the very temples of justice if not stopped
 Are we to have a veritabie Reign of Terror. such as made portions of France a seething hell of crime du- ring the French RevolutionH Have civ- iIisation and humanity gone back wards. and has judgment descended to brutisli beasts" in this Twentieth Century? There must be stop put to iawlessness or government is fall | ure. The criminals must be made to understand that the, laws, of the coun- try have not yet become dead letter and brute force taken their place. If these outrages and excesses cannot be put down in or through the usual pro- cesses of the law, then crime must be met by force and the military take the place of civil government
 Is the time coming when in any por- tion of Alabama. for example, the civil laws will all be suspended and martial law take their place? When instead of arrests under due process of. law men viii be shot down by soldiers becauss there can be no other way to put down crime? It looks very much as If such . time is bound to come in some parts of the South. and it may come to Alabama az well. It Is a serious matter. and God grant that men may return to reason and convince thmeselves that the government of law and order can not be abandoned in this great Repuh- lic