historian appears to be different from the initial opinion, for he proceeds: 'On the other hand, one sometimes hears in America of breaches of the law of a peculiar kind, which certainly have nothing like them in this country. I do not mean mere outbreaks of popular indignation against particular persons. The American papers, while I was in the country, contained a good many ugly stories in these ways; but I dare say it would have been easy to cap each of them by stories of the same kind in England, or, at any rate, elsewhere in Europe. I mean outrages directly committed against the law itself. I read an account how, not in any wild place in the Far West, but in so respectable a place as Ohio, a man committed for trial on a charge of murder, but not yet tried, was taken out of prison by a mob and hanged. And this case did not stand alone. I heard of other cases of prisons being in this way forced, even of officers of justice being killed in resisting this specially lawless form of violence.' * The following recent example shows that ten years has made no improvement in the State of Ohio. In a civilised State it is probable the mental condition of the lynched man would have been found to be the cause of his crime:: 'A terrible case of murder, followed by lynching, has occurred here. On Sunday last Joseph Lytle, an inmate of the National Soldiers' Home at Dayton, having obtained leave of absence, arrived here and visited the home of his divorced wife. He remained quietly in the house until yesterday, when, without any warning, he suddenly made a murderous attack upon his daughters, Della and Emma, who were at breakfast. He dealt the former a terrible blow on the head with a hatchet, which he had sharpened on Monday, crushing in her skull. He then attacked his other daughter, but she dodged the blow aimed at her, and escaped with a slight wound. The murderer then rushed at his wife, who, although an invalid, struggled desperately with him, trying to avoid the blows of his hatchet. He struck her six times on the head without breaking her skull, but one cut severed a finger. The woman at length sank down exhausted, and Lytle then crushed in her skull. After smashing the piano and other furniture in the house Lytle surrendered to the police. No motive for the crimes can be imagined. When the tragedy became known the people grew furious, and a howling crowd of about 1,000 persons soon assembled outside the gaol in which the man was confined. Stones were thrown at the building, and the windows broken, but Lytle's cell could not be reached. Oil-well drills were then procured, and the doors of the gaol forced. The mob rushed into the prison, and were directed to the murderer's cell by Lytle himself, who called out to them, and seems to have expected the vengeance of the people. It took nearly an hour to batter down the cell door, as the mob did not attempt to get the sheriff's keys. When, however, the cell was at last thrown open, Lytle was dragged out and taken to a bridge a short distance off. On arriving Mr. Freeman then goes on to speak of the Garfield 'Avengers,' and the attempted murder of Guiteau by one of the soldiers who were guarding him, and he next proceeds to consider whether this species of law-breaking is a characteristic of a democratic country-whether the historian of the Norman Conquest is, or is not, of this opinion, seems uncertain. It is possible,' he writes (p. 103), 'that men may fancy that by taking the law into their own hands they are assisting their rights as the original source of law,' and he then, perhaps unnecessarily, for it is selfevident, proceeds to combat the wrong-headedness of such a view. Mr. Freeman hints again at a certain weakness in the 'administration of the law' as a possible cause of lawlessness; he thought that on the whole human life was less thought of in America than it is in England.' Therefore, we find an acute observer, who is bound to note facts and to draw inferences, struck with the large mass of ordinary crime, struck also with the unrestrained outbreaks of pure lawlessness. We find him groping for the causes of this state of things, but arriving at no definite conclusion. The observations and searchings of such a man as Mr. Freeman are full of interest, and they tend to show, though not, we may admit, to prove, that Americans are in truth not a law-abiding people that the democratic system is under some circumstances not favourable to law and order, and that the system of lynch law has weakened respect for human life and produced a contempt for the regular administration of justice. It must be confessed, too, that it is strange that a people which desires to be regarded as law-abiding should allow a fundamental part of the constitution to be violated with impunity and with approval. Article V. of the amendments of the Constitution enacts that no person shall be . . . 'deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of 'law.' Article VI. amplifies the preceding article by enact there the people placed a rope round his neck, and threw the end over a cross-piece. As the wretched man was being hauled up, a revolver shot, fired by a man in the crowd, severed the rope, and he fell to the ground. He was quickly raised again, however, and hustled to a telegraph pole, where the lynching was completed. Lytle left a note in his cell, asking that his body might be handed over to his brother, and that he might be buried beside his mother. Lytle was much addicted to drink, and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment some time ago for shooting his little son,' ing that the accused shall, among other rights, have that of being informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, and confronted with the witnesses against him, of having compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favour, and of having the assistance of counsel in his defence. When a man suspected of having committed some crime is tried, if it can be so termed, and executed under lynch law, he is deprived of every one of these fundamental constitutional rights; so far as he is concerned the constitution is mere waste paper, the advantages of civilisation have disappeared, and for a time he is the victim of a barbarism in some sense more shocking, because it is veiled under a semblance of justice, and is found, not in an uncivilised region, but in a wealthy and prosperous republic. As we have already pointed out, the attention of the western world was attracted for a time very strongly to the lynching at New Orleans. No doubt that was a remarkable example of the general lawlessness which is characteristic of the United States. But instances of the same thing are of constant occurrence-they may be read by anyone who will take the trouble to search the newspapers day by day. These, forming as they do incidents in the daily life of the American people, are examples of greater weight than the single instance at New Orleans, in which racial dislikes probably played a part. Mr. Freeman refers to the respectable State of Ohio. Here is an instance from Alabama. A certain Hawes, accused of the murder of his wife and child, near Birmingham, in Alabama, was confined in the gaol of that place. The mob attacked the building about midnight, and were only repulsed by the guard firing several volleys upon them, whereby nine men were killed and several others wounded. On the following day order was preserved by five hundred militiamen patrolling the town. Moreover, by way of encouraging upholders of justice, the sheriff, who was responsible for the untried prisoner, was arrested on a charge of murder! * Here we have a glaring instance of the mob desiring a victim, to use Chief Justice Story's exact phrase, 'with clamorous precipitancy.' A gaol attacked by a mob, a building defended by guards with firearms, some of the mob killed, and the sheriff arrested, is scarcely a picture of law and order. Let us see what can happen to a sheriff who attempts to do his duty on a common occasion, for burglars are not unknown in this *Times,' December 10 and 11, 1888. country. Mr. White, a deputy sheriff, had not long ago to arrest two burglars at Clinton, Missouri; he was shot dead, and the men escaped.* Leaving the officers of the law, let us see what happens to railway travellers. A World's Fair-the apex of civilisation-is shortly to be held at Chicago; but on the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul's Railway a train was robbed at one o'clock on the morning of November 12, 1891. The robbers boarded the train at a small wayside station about 23 miles from Milwaukee, broke into the express car, and carried off a quantity of specie. Two of the gang threatened to shoot the engine-driver and fireman, and then burst open the door of the car with dynamite bombs.† So late as the middle of January these robbers had not, according to information furnished by the company, been arrested. Let us turn to another phase of life-to the home of the lawyer and the office of the journalist. On March 18, 1891, the Times' chronicles how one Judge Dobbs shot his sonin-law at Chattanooga, Tennessee, and on the 23rd of the same month the same paper told us how a certain Hardenstein, an editor, was shot by a person named Cashman at Vicksburg. We may complete this series of incidents by a story of lynching in Arkansas, in which nine negroes lost their lives: After 'The pursuit of a striking band of negro cotton pickers, who Lad killed Inspector Miller, of the Fran Plantation, and burned the gin house, has had a tragic ending, though not an unexpected one. a day of desultory shooting and bush fighting, nine of the fugitives were captured, and Sheriff Derick left Cat Island with them to lock them up in the county gaol. The sheriff had a posse of deputy sheriffs and citizens acting as guards. The party had gone but a short distance from Cat Island, however, before a troop of men armed with Winchester rifles and revolvers came galloping up, and, surrounding the party, demanded the prisoners. In view of the prevailing state of public opinion, the sheriff deemed it better to surrender the fugitives rather than begin an affray which would have entailed much bloodshed. The prisoners were accordingly handed over to the troop, who took them away into the woods. After riding a short distance the party stopped, and without any ceremony began hanging the entire band. They were strung up without benefit of clergy; the men, as they waited their turn, praying for mercy and protesting their innocence. No appeals were listened to, however, and the entire nine were left hanging to limbs of trees or dead upon the ground. The lynching party were all citizens of the county, and re *New York Times,' November 11, 1891. solved upon this action to check, if possible, the long series of negro outrages which have made life and property unsafe in the plantation districts. The negroes throughout this district are in the majority, and whenever they become possessed of arms are a menace to plantation owners and the whites in general. The strike for higher wages for cotton picking has not only thrown them all out of employment, but has developed a latent spirit of lawlessness. It is believed that the summary action of the lynching party will have a salutary effect upon the negroes throughout the State." (Times,' October 2, 1891.) It will be noticed that every one of the prisoners was hanged, but that only one person-namely, Inspector Miller -had been murdered in the first instance. It is, therefore, impossible to suppose that every one of these nine men was guilty in an equal degree, and it is more than probable that one or more of them was entirely innocent. It is thus difficult to regard this incident except as a bloodthirsty and lawless outrage done regardless of all the rules of justice, and calculated to increase racial hatred and to cause the negro population of the district to hatch schemes of revenge. There is yet another point in this instance which should not be lost sight of. The murder of Inspector Miller arose from a state of lawlessness among the negro population. Thus it is clear that the primary cause of the two outrages was an imperfect state of police administration in Arkansas. Another incident, which occurred on December 21 last, is noteworthy. The facts are concisely stated in the Times' of December 23, 1891 : A few masked men yesterday entered the gaol at Dewitt, Arkansas, and shot and killed three men, named J. Smith, Floyd Gregory, and Mose Henderson, the last being a negro. 'Smith's wife recently succeeded in obtaining a divorce from her husband, and one night, shortly afterwards, Henderson went to the house in which the woman was living and shot her, but without inflicting a fatal wound. The negro subsequently confessed that Smith had hired him to murder his wife, promising him a generous reward. Smith and his son-in-law, Gregory, were thereupon arrested, the latter being charged with guiding the negro to the house. It is thought that a rumour that Smith and Gregory would be released on bail led to the lynching of the prisoners. The police have no clue to the men who entered the prison.' It is well to note these facts with some care: they show an extraordinary but chronic state of complete lawlessness in the State of Arkansas. The divorced wife is shot in her own house by the negro Henderson. An attempted murder is not in itself a matter for wonderment on either side of the Atlantic, but this instance is remarkable from the fact that |