ican government must the liberties of
the people depend, was in the hands of the pliant tools of designing
politicians, or of desperate knaves ready to bargain and sell the result
of the election to the party or individuals who would pay the largest
sum for it. By such infamous arts had many officials of law and justice
been placed in situations of trust and power. Could it reasonably
be expected that they would honestly and fairly apply the law to the
punishment of the friends who had given them their offices, when they
added to these crimes against society, the scarcely more flagrant ones
of robbery and murder? If it was possible, the people did not believe
it would be done. They saw enough to convince them that it was not done.
They saw an unarmed man shot down and instantly killed in one of the
most frequented streets of the city while endeavoring to escape from
his pursuer. They saw the forms of trial applied in this clear case, and
after every quibble and perversion of law which ingenuity could devise
had been tried, the lame and impotent conclusion arrived at of a verdict
of manslaughter, and a sentence for a short period to the State Prison.
They saw a gambler, while quietly conversing with the United States
Marshal in the doorway of a store on Clay Street, draw a revolver from
his pocket and slay him upon the spot. They heard that gamblers and
other notorious characters, his associates and friends, had raised large
sums; that able lawyers had been retained for his defense; and then that
his trial had ended in a disagreement of the Jury, soon to be followed,
as they believed, by a nolle prosequi, and the discharge of the red
handed murderer. They saw an Editor, for commenting on a homicide in the
interior of the State, committed by a man claiming to be respectable,
and followed by his acquittal in the face of what appeared to be the
clearest evidence of his guilt; assaulted by the criminal in a public
street in San Francisco, knocked down from behind by a blow on the head
from a loaded cane, and beaten into insensibility, and, as seemed, to
death; while three of the assailant's friends stood by, with cocked
revolvers, threatening to slay anyone who should interfere. Again
they saw the farce of trial resulting, as every one knew it would, in
acquittal. At length, so confirmed and strengthened were villains by
the certainty of escape from punishment, that they did not even trouble
themselves to become assured of the