f no pernicious example be
set by it, is never matter of reasonable regret with any one. If
they were annually swept from the stage of existence by the plague or
smallpox, honest men would perhaps be much profited by the operation.
Similar too is the correct reasoning in regard to the burning of the
negro at St. Louis. He had forfeited his life by the perpetration of an
outrageous murder upon one of the most worthy and respectable citizens
of the city, and had he not died as he did, he must have died by the
sentence of the law in a very short time afterwards. As to him alone,
it was as well the way it was as it could otherwise have been. But the
example in either case was fearful. When men take it in their heads
to-day to hang gamblers or burn murderers, they should recollect that in
the confusion usually attending such transactions they will be as likely
to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one
who is, and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow
may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same
mistake. And not only so: the innocent, those who have ever set their
faces against violations of law in every shape, alike with the guilty
fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by
step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and
property of individuals are trodden down and disregarded. But all this,
even, is not the full extent of the evil. By such examples, by instances
of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit
are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to
no restraint but dread of punishment, they thus become absolutely
unrestrained. Having ever regarded government as their deadliest bane,
they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations, and pray for
nothing so much as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand,
good men, men who love tranquillity, who desire to abide by the laws and
enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense
of their country, seeing their property destroyed, their families
insulted, and their lives endangered, their persons injured, and seeing
nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better, become tired
of and disgusted with a government that offers them no protection, and
are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing
to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this