The central record. (Lancaster, Ky.) 18??-current, 1912-12-13

Il wouldnot call out the state troops
to protect from mob violence negro
brute who had placed desecrating
hands upon a white woman" is an ut
terance credited to Gov. Blease of
South Carolina before the Conference
of Governors in Richmond Va. last
week. No matter how sincere the
Governor may have been in this ut
terance, it is the consensus of opinion
that his opinion would have much bet
ter been unvoiced. There is no crime
in the calender which so quickly ex-
cites the ire of a white man as the
maltreatment of white woman by
negro nothing which so quickly causes
them to lose their reason, sense of
Justice, blinds them to the law and to
everything save the quick and sure
melting out to the brute the justice he
so richly deserves. In many, too
many, instances this crime has so in
furiated men, especially in our beloved
southland, that they have in the heat
of their passion, ignored the law and
resorted to mob violence. However,
in late years mob violence in the south
has been noticeably on the decrease,
men have become more and more i'm
pressed with the wisdom Of allowing
the law to take its course, and have
been encouraged in this plausible
course by the law quickly and surely
awarding to the culprits their just de-
serts.
This is as it should be, too long has
our fair southland had it hurled in her
teeth that they were too ready to
wreak summary vengeance on these
miscreants without giving them a
chance for their life, to prove their in
nocence..
Now just when the southern people
are becoming awakened to the fact
that it is better to await the action of
the law, along comes this Governor of
South Carolina, the highest officer in
the state, its chief executive, a man
who is sworn to uphold the law and
constitution of his state, whose duty it
is to throw around every prisoner
charged with crime within the borders
of his state every protection which the
law sffords, and before a congregation
of other chief executives, and an au-
dience containing many ladies', re-
marks, Ito hell with the constitution"
and further openly avows that he will
not offer the protection of the laws of
his state to the above named class of
! prisoners. Shame on you Gov. Belease
its is not only slur upon the fair
name of South Carolina. but upon
the entire south, a blow at a work
which it has taken years to accomplish,
and which is not yet entirely accom-
| plished, the stamping out of mob law;
a tacit encouragement to vioIators of
the law within his own state.
However, We are glad to say that
Gov. Blease met with scant en-
cozragement in his drastic utterance.
| Upon the other hand he received a
severe verbal castigation at the hands
of some of his colleagues, and but for
the rules of courtesy as from one
Governor to another, he would have
been much more severely dealt with.
AS it was a resolution was adopted
condemning him for his utterances.
Utterances like the above falling
from the lips of men such as he mer
whose primary duty it is to uphold the
law, to afford the full protection of the
law to every prisoner, regardless of
the degree of his crime, are calculated
to encourage most dangerous evil, a
black crime of itself, mob law, a Gus.
tom which we are sorry to say has pre-.
vailed to some extent in the south, but
which has always been frowned upor
by the better class, the law abiding
element, and which has gradually
grown into disuse, and which we truly
hope will not be given a new momen.
tum. not even in the state of South
Carolina, by the encouragement Offered
its leaders by Gov. Blease.