But the law of the desert is terrible by reason of the majesty with
which it is invested, or claims to be invested.

This law is terrible in common with all laws of blood, and the more so,
since those who have recourse to it usurp a power which does not belong
to them, inasmuch as the injured party constitutes himself judge of his
own cause, and executes the sentence which he himself has pronounced.

Such is the so-called "Lynch law."

In the central parts of America, white men as well as Indians execute
this law with cruel severity against each other. Civilised communities
adopt it in a mitigated form as applied to capital punishment, but the
untutored inhabitants of the desert continue to practise it with the
same rigour which belonged to the first ages of mankind.

And may we not here make the remark, that the similitude of feeling on
this point, between the white man and the savages, casts a stain upon
the former which for his own honour he should endeavour to wipe out?

Society has provided laws for the protection of all men. The man who
amongst us should assume the right of judgment, and take the law into
his own hands, would thus violate it, and fall under the jurisdiction of
those whom society has appointed to try, and to condemn.

We are not without a hope that at some future time, as civilisation
advances, men will allow that they who deprive a culprit of that life
which none can recall, commit an act of sacrilege in defiance of those
divine laws which govern the universe and take precedence of all human
decrees.

A time will come, we would fain believe, when our laws may spare the
life of a guilty man, and suffer him to atone for his errors or his
crimes by repentance. Such a law would respect the life which can never
be restored; and while another exists which casts an irretrievable stain
upon our honour, there would be a law of restoration capable of raising
the man sanctified by repentance to the dignity which punishment would
have prevented his attaining.

"There is more joy in heaven," says the gospel, "over a sinner who
repents, than a righteous man made perfect." Why then are not human
laws a counterpart of these divine decrees?

Now, however, liberty is the only boon which society confers upon him
whose misfortunes or whose crimes have deprived him of it.

Misfortunes did we not say? Is there not in truth a law which
assimilates the criminal with the upright though insolvent debtor, and