that he has no right to select one, two, or even three States out of twenty-six, and compare them all with England and Wales. The question is, the comparative security of person and property in Great Britain and the United States. I acknowledge that, if Ireland were taken into the account, it would very much reduce our proportional numbers; but, then, there crime is fomented by traitors and demagogues-a circumstance which must not be overlooked. Still, the whole of Ireland would offer nothing equal in atrocity to what I can prove relative to one small town in America: that of Augusta, in Georgia, containing only a population of 3,000, in which, in one year, there were fifty-nine assassinations committed in open day, without any notice being taken of them by the authorities. This, alone, will exceed all Ireland, and I therefore do not hesitate to assert, that if every crime committed in the United States were followed up by conviction, as it would be in Great Britain, the result would fully substantiate the fact that, in security of person and property, the advantage is considerably in favour of my own country. 226 LYNCH LAW. ENGLISHMEN express their surprise that in a moral community such a monstrosity as Lynch law should exist; but although the present system, which has been derived from the original Lynch law, cannot be too severely condemned, it must, in justice to the Americans, be considered that the original custom of Lynch law was forced upon them by circumstances. Why the term Lynch law has been made use of, I do not know; but in its origin the practice was no more blameable than were the laws established by the Pilgrim fathers on their first landing at Plymouth, or any law enacted amongst a community left to themselves, their own resources, and their own guidance and government. Lynch law, as at first constituted, was nothing more than punishment awarded to offend ers by a community who had been injured, and who had no law to refer to, and could have no redress if they did not take the law into their own hands; the present system of Lynch law is, on the contrary, an illegal exercise of the power of the majority in opposition to and defiance of the laws of the country, and the measure of justice administered and awarded by those laws. It must be remembered that fifty years ago, there were but few white men to the westward of the Alleghany Mountains; that the States of Kentucky and Tennessee were at that time as scanty in population as even now are the districts of Ioway and Columbia; that by the institutions of the Union a district required a certain number of inhabitants before it could be acknowledged as even a district; and that previous to such acknowledgment, the people who had squatted on the land had no claim to protection or law. It must also be borne in mind, that these distant territories offered an asylum to many who fled from the vengeance of the laws, men without principle, thieves, rogues, and vagabonds, who escaping there, would often interfere with the happiness and peace of some small yet well-conducted community, which had migrated and settled on these fertile regions. These communities had no appeal against personal violence, no protection from rapacity and injustice. They were not yet within the pale of the Union; indeed there are many even now in this precise situation (that of the Mississippi, for instance), who have been necessitated to make laws of government for themselves, and who acting upon their own responsibilities, do very often condemn to death, and execute.* therefore, to remedy the defect of there being no It was, "A similar case is to be found at the present day, west of the Mississippi. Upon lands belonging to the United States, not yet surveyed or offered for sale, are numerous bodies of people who have occupied them, with the intention of purchasing them when they shall be brought into the market. These persons are called squatters, and it is not to be supposed that they consist of the élite of the emigrants to the West; yet we are informed that they have organized |