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"Europe applauded when the western nations sacrificed millions of Indians in America, and not by any means to found nations much more moral or more pacific: there is the North with its egotistic liberty, its lynch-law, its political frauds the South with its turbulent republics, its barbarous revolutions, civil wars, pronunciamientos, as in its mother Spain!
Lynch-law against oppressive landlords or their agents cannot be put down by intensifying national hatred.... Has the Coercion been wisely directed and reasonably guarded from abuse? I am sorry to say, flatly and plainly, No; and that Mr. Gladstone himself, as well as Mr. Forster, seems to have gone more and more to the wrong as the Bill moved on.... Mr.
His eyes wavered, for there is nothing more terrifying than the avowed hostility of a mass of men, and no law grimmer than lynch-law. Yet he held up his head with a sort of pride in his danger some touch of that subtle sense of personal distinction which seems to reach the heart of the victim of an accident, or of a prisoner in the dock.
For I've been most emphatic to Whinstane Sandy in the matter of his delightful little lynch-law program. There shall be no tarring and feathering of women by any man in my employ. That may have been possible in the Klondike in the days of the gold-rush, but it's not possible in this country and this day of grace except in the movies.
The fact of two poles, of two forces, centripetal and centrifugal, is universal, and each force by its own activity develops the other. Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience. 'Lynch-law' prevails only where there is greater hardihood and self-subsistency in the leaders.
Glencaid meanwhile recovered from its mania of lynch-law, and even began exhibiting some faint evidences of shame over what was so plainly a mistake. And the populace were also beginning to exhibit no small degree of interest in the weighty matters which concerned the fast-culminating love affairs of Miss Spencer.
And, too, under the operation of the lynch-law the criminal knows that any old tramp is just as liable as himself to be seized and hanged. "This accursed practice, instead of decreasing, grows in extent year by year.
This was the murder of one miner by another, and the summary application of Lynch-law to the criminal. It occurred about noon, when the miners were at dinner. A man named Higson, who was noted for swearing and brutality, was standing near Jeffson's store, when a young miner named Elms came up, greatly excited, in consequence of having just found a large nugget, which he wished to have weighed.
A great deal has been said and written lately about feuds and lynch-law in the districts around the lower Mississippi. The reports of recent lynching there have probably been very much exaggerated; and it would certainly be unfair to form a positive opinion about the matter without a thorough knowledge of all the circumstances.
In this case, if there is any miscarriage of justice, I will say here and now that in my opinion the people of this county will be sorely tempted; and while I do not believe in lynch-law, yet if that should be the result it is my unalterable conviction that the vigilantes may well turn their attention to the lawyers OR LAWYER who bring about such miscarriage. I am sick of it."
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