uth better they
would also understand that in some cases it is extremely difficult to
blame the lynchers. Many of those people who in London (or in Boston)
are loudest in condemnation of outrages upon the negro would if they
lived in certain sections of the South not only sympathise with but
participate in the unlawful proceedings.

It has already been mentioned that among the men in New Orleans who
assisted at the summary execution of the Italian Mafiotes there were, it
is believed, an ex-Governor of the State and a Judge: men, that is to
say, as civilised and of as humane sentiments as the members of any club
in Pall Mall. They were not bloodthirsty ruffians, but gentlemen who did
what they did from a stern sense of necessity. It has been my lot to
live for a while in a community in which the maintenance of law and
order depended entirely on a self-constituted Vigilance Committee; and
the operations of that committee were not only salutary but necessary.
It has also been my lot to live in a community where the upholders of
law and order were not strong enough to organise a Vigilance Committee.
I have been one of three or four who behind closed doors earnestly
canvassed the possibilities of forming such an organisation, and neither
I nor any of the others (among whom I remember were included one
attorney-at-law and one mining engineer and surveyor) would have
hesitated to serve on such a committee could it have been made of
sufficient strength to achieve any useful purpose, but the disparity
between our numbers and those of the "bad men" who at that time
controlled the community was too obvious to give us any hope of being
able to enforce our authority. There may, therefore, be conditions of
society infinitely worse than those where order is preserved by lynch
law; and I make no doubt that neither I myself nor any fellow-member of
my London Club would, if living in one of the bad black districts of the
South, act otherwise than do the Southern whites who live there now.

What is deplorable is not the spirit which prompts the acts of summary
justice (I am speaking only of one class of Southern "outrage") but the
conditions which make the perpetration of those acts the only
practicable way of rendering life livable for white people; and for the
responsibility for these conditions we must go back either to the
institution of slavery itself (for which it should be remembered that
England was to blame) or to the follies an