the would-be assassin was hired to commit a murder with as little difficulty as a bravo in medieval Italy. Then comes the arrest of the supposed criminals, which in its turn is followed by the lynching of the prisoners in the prison itself. According to the above facts, there was nothing but the confession of the negro Henderson (on his own showing an unmitigated ruffian) to convict Smith and Gregory of having connived at the attempted murder. It is possible they were guilty men; it is possible they were innocent; it is not certain that if guilty they were criminals of equal degree. Yet while awaiting their trial they are killed by a band of citizens with as little hesitation as if they were vermin on a farm-with a semblance of a trial and in absolute defiance of the simplest principles of justice and of a fundamental article of the Constitution of the United States.

There is, therefore, clearly found in this State imperfect police administration arising from a carelessness in the minds of the citizens, and a preference for rude methods of imperfect justice calculated to increase rather than diminish permanent lawlessness. For the troop of men mentioned in the first example might have done something as citizens to improve the administration of criminal justice in this State. Instead, they adopt this rude method of killing innocent and guilty together, and thus familiarise still more the public mind with a method of so-called justice subversive of all true principles of law and order. This cheapness and simplicity, as it is termed by Mr. Bryce, undeniably must cause innocent men to be murdered.

It is not easy to follow out all these incidents on this side the Atlantic, but there is an instance which it may be desirable to recall which shows how an innocent man may be sacrificed by this so-called method of justice.

Fifty-two years ago, in the woods of Cttawa county, Michigan, a knife and gun were found, and identified as the property of a trapper known as "Handsome Snuggles." There was blood on the knife, and the finder thought he saw traces of a conflict. Nothing was heard of Smuggles, though the forest was scoured by searching parties; and it was finally decided not only that he was dead, but that a log chopper, named Chester Holden, had killed him. The supposed murderer was hanged to a tree by a mob of lumbermen. The other day an old gentleman, more than ninety years of age, arrived on the spot, and it was discovered that he was no other than "Handsome Smuggles," revisiting his old haunts. It appears, according to a correspondent at Grand Haven, Milwaukee, that, when a young man, "Smuggles " quarrelled with his brother over the division of a farm they had inherited from their father near Boston, and struck out alone for the

west, settling down as a trapper. One day, on going to the town of Grand Rapids to sell some furs, he learnt that his brother was dead, and, without returning to his cabin in the wood, he set off on foot for the east. He had never heard of the tragic sequel to his sudden departure, and the old man was much affected when he was told that a young man, whom he distinctly remembered, had been hanged as his murderer more than half a century since.' *

It would be unjust not to admit that both lynch law and fatal fights are not altogether unnatural when groups of men assemble in comparatively unpopulated regions, and when a police and a judicial administration can yet scarcely exist. But acts of mob violence and of individual revenge, of which we have given a few instances, which might be indefinitely multiplied, are not found only on the confines of American civilisation among the newly cleared patches of the settler; they take place all over the United States, and they are a sign, as has been pointed out, at once of a weak administration of justice, and a general contempt for some of the first rules of law and order. In Canada, in the Australian colonies of the British Empire, this turbulent lawlessness is absent; it is therefore not a necessary feature in young communities or in very democratic societies. The reason for it must be sought in some special circumstances of the United States, and there can be little doubt that among the causes is the character of criminal justice in that country; the position of the judiciary is calculated to cause this bad public tone to increase.

Justice is slow and uncertain; the nature of the Republic places difficulties in the way of bringing offenders to trial; the Bench does not possess the real confidence of the people. These things would in themselves have a strong tendency to weaken the right feeling of the community. When they are united with a rude population in the sparsely populated portion of the Republic, and with a tide of emigration containing very lawless men, we have all the elements likely to produce a chronic state of lawlessness.

It is time to turn to some of the more glaring imperfections which exist in the criminal law of the United States. A cause of delay in bringing criminals to justice and of their complete escape in some instances arises from the federal character of the Republic. A person who commits a crime in State A, and before arrest betakes himself into State B, must be tried in State A. But in order that he may be

* ' Times,' November 11, 1891.

tried there the process of interstate extradition must be gone through. The Governor of State A must demand the accused person from the Governor of State B, and in order to justify his extradition the form of the law must be strictly complied with and a prima facie case of guilt must be shown by indictment found or by affidavit. But all such technical and official procedure as this at the best of times causes delay, acting as a hindrance to the rapid conviction of offenders. The enormous development of railway communication has of late years made this procedure an even greater hindrance to justice. A man may be first in one State and then in another, so that a cunning criminal may from the very nature of the Constitution of the Republic for a time keep out of the clutches of the police. But when such a hindrance exists it has not only a direct but an indirect effect by giving immunity to criminals. Men will not take the

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trouble to set the police on the trail of offenders when they know full well that there are so many opportunities for their escape. There are plenty of easy-going people who will only shrug their shoulders and leave the criminal to himself. man gains nothing by prosecuting a criminal; he must be influenced either by a spirit of revenge or by a strong desire for the triumph of justice if he goes much out of his way merely to prosecute a criminal by whom he has been injured, and any such hindrance as that just stated forms an admirable excuse for lethargy in bringing a criminal to justice.

But it has yet other effects: it causes to be left at large a number of criminals who would otherwise have been prevented from committing further crime, or who would have been deterred by punishment from repetition of their offence. And while it thus helps to increase the criminal classes, leaving men who may be either habitual or occasional criminals at large, it also necessarily tends to weaken the respect for the law. It is, however, a national defect which is not likely to be cured; it arises from the particular form of the Constitution.

Another consequence of the character of the Constitution. of the United States is the absence of uniformity in the criminal law. In some States capital punishment exists, in others it does not, and it may be stated as an indisputable fact that in every State differences both of law and practice are to be found. To take another example: In the State of New York the sentence is pronounced by the bench; in Iowa, since 1878, in murder cases the jury determine whether the punishment shall be death or imprisonment

for life; in the State of Illinois the sentence is pronounced by the jury; an instance, and a very remarkable one, of this practice is to be found in the Cronin case. It is impossible to conceive a worse system than the infliction of punishment by a jury; it altogether prevents any uniformity of punishment, or any infliction of it corresponding to the nature of the criminal act. It opens the door to popular influences, and it is only in degree removed from lynch law itself.

Mr. Bryce admits that the frequent failures to convict 'criminals, or punish them when convicted, are attributable not so much either to weakness or partiality on a judge's part, as to the tenderness of juries and the inordinate delays and complexity of criminal procedure.' The wrongful tenderness of juries' has even greater scope in sentencing criminals than in not convicting them.

Exact uniformity of sentence is not, it may fairly be admitted, to be found even in a small country such as England, but the discrepancies of punishments in the different states of the Union are very striking.

'The differences,' we quote from Census Bulletin No. 106, 'between the average sentences in different States are a surprise. They range from 2 years and 356 days in Rhode Island to 12 years and 116 days in Mississippi, and seem to be governed by no discoverable law. States which join each other, and in which the conditions are presumably similar, manifest differences in this regard, which are unexplained. For instance, the average sentence in New Hampshire is 2 years and 141 days more than in Maine, or about 50 per cent. greater.'

It is unquestionable that if the sentences for a given period at half a dozen quarter sessions in England were taken they would differ in a manner not always explainable by a plain rule. Therefore too much stress should not be laid on these differences. On the other hand there are indications to be found which tend to show the difference in the views of law and order which are held in different States. Thus in Rhode Island there were nine life sentences among an aggregate of 122 penitentiary convicts. In Arkansas, which is notorious for murder and lynching, out of an aggregate of 832 penitentiary convicts there were only ten life sentences. But an intelligent administration of justice cannot exist without uniformity of punishment, and such uniformity, it is obvious, is not to be found in the United States.

Justice, as we have said, is slow, but not with a deliberate

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and certain tread in order to prevent innocent men from suffering wrong, but with the limping and uncertain gait which prevents the punishment of the guilty. The country suffers, to use the words of Mr. Hayes, a former President of the United States, in his address at the Annual Congress of the United States Prison Society in November 1889, from laxity and delay fostered by the law itself, which 'emboldens offenders and leads to lawless violence.' Take for example the New York Code of 1881. Let us note the opportunities which a criminal has under it of escaping from the meshes of the law. He may demur to the indictment. This is not a hopeful plan of campaign in most cases. But after he has been tried and convicted, there are a number of avenues of escape open to him. He may file a bill of exceptions; or he may move for a new trial on two grounds, either that because, as he alleges, the verdict is against the weight of evidence, or because he has fresh evidence to adduce, which will, as he alleges, alter the verdict. But if these grounds fail him, he has yet open to him the ordinary procedure by way of appeal.

The results of this procedure have been well summarised by Mr. Bryce. In most States he says

'there exist much wider facilities for setting aside the verdict of a jury, by raising all sorts of points of law, than are permitted by the law and practice of England. Such facilities have been, and are, abused, to the great detriment of the community.' (Ch. xl. 11.) It is well to exemplify this statement by concrete instances, since theoretical objections to a system, whether legal or social, are not always found to be supported by facts. We take an instance not from the lawless South or the badly policed West, but from the State of New York. In 1891 Dr. H. J. McGonegal was convicted by a jury of manslaughter of an aggravated character. The victim was a young girl upon whom the prisoner had effected an unlawful operation, and after death took away the body at night time. After the conviction Dr. McGonegal was allowed to go out on bail by Judge Barlow of Brooklyn on a bond to the amount of $5,000; the judge, says the report from which we take the facts, reiterating his belief in the prisoner's innocence, and declaring that the conviction would not be affirmed. Affirmed, however, it was by the General Term of the Supreme Court, each of the judges who formed the Court being clearly of opinion that there was not one single reason for altering the verdict of the jury. The prisoner had meanwhile been at large for several months, and it is stated had even in this