shonest and vicious and to repress crime, but they are
really made hotbeds of vice; and where sufficient vitality remains in
the unfortunates, they actually propagate and multiply criminals.

But if the question should become so varied as to inquire whether the
Negro in the South charged with crime is justly dealt with in the
courts thereof; in other words, is he afforded a fair trial there?--it
could not be fully answered without taking into consideration the
heinous crime with which the Negro is generally charged. There is
nothing more revolting than rape, unless it be mob-rule. There is no
true man, white or black, who would not rejoice to see condign
punishment visited upon the brute legally proven guilty of this most
diabolical crime.

The South justifies lynching on the ground that it shields the victim
of the crime from the publicity to which a trial of the perpetrator
would expose her. That is to say, the lynchers prefer to violate the
organic law, which provides that no one shall be deprived of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law. They put the mob
above the judicial system of the country, and arrogate to it greater
power to protect the honor of the outraged female and uphold the
majesty of the law than a court of justice. It is a sad reflection
upon the administration of justice even to intimate that the mob which
ruthlessly defies the law is better qualified to administer justice
than the court established by law to try and determine the guilt or
innocence of persons charged with the commission of crime.

In the dark ages of English history, it frequently happened that the
person charged with the commission of crime was first executed and
afterward his trial was had, and if a verdict of not guilty was found,
his bones were disinterred and given a state funeral. But the Negro
charged with the commission of crime in the South is frequently not
granted a trial before or after execution; so that the Negro is not
justly dealt with in the courts of the South, even after he has been
hung, drawn and quartered, or burned.

In some instances where the Negro is fortunate enough to confront his
accusers in a court in the South, the caste prejudice against him too
often reduces his trial to a mere mockery of justice.

The cornerstone of the Republic is justice, to establish which, under
liberty, its founders set foot upon these hostile shores in the early
part of the seventeenth century. From that t