LYNCH-LAW AND LYNCHING law, instead of being something in itself to reverence and respect, is little more than a device for securing freedom. The value of laws as rules of conduct is not minimized, but there is no sense of sanctity pertaining to them. To outwit, avoid, defy, or for get the laws is not a serious offense so long as an appeal can be made to the individual sense of justice in support of such courses of action." How important it is, therefore, that some definite and wise legislation be invoked to impress upon the mob the power and virtue of our penal statutes as admin istered in our courts of justice under the forms of law. As was once said by Thomas Jefferson: "It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law, than that he should escape." And as good and law-abiding citizens we shall have to, sooner or later, recognize the force of this wise and just observation. The price of good govern ment is the willingness to be governed by it. Admitting, as it must be admitted, that the reign of the mob is all too frequent in this country, it will be worth while to examine some of the facts, arguments and conclusions found in the volume before us. There has been a wide-spread opinion prevailing in this country, and, perhaps, elsewhere, that most of the lynchings of negroes was for the crime of rape against white women. For in most cases, where a negro is the victim of the mob, his summary execution is justified on account of the loathsomeness of his crime against a white woman. The author shows conclusively, from statistics which seem quite convincing, that during the last twenty-two years not more than thirty-four per cent of the negroes summarily put to death have been lynched for that crime, either alleged, attempted, or actually committed. The argument offered in some quarters in justi fication of the lynching of negroes because of the criminal 'assault on defenseless white women, must, in the light of the conclusions of Dr. Cutler, based, as he assures us, on
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carefully prepared statistics, prove un tenable and unavailing. The writer suggests that the lynching of negroes in recent years can be justified on no other ground than that the law as formu lated and administered has proved inade quate to deal with the situation, that it has seemed utterly unsuited to the function of dealing with negro criminals. There may be more truth in the following observation than we are, at first thought, willing to concede: "A judicial system adapted to a highly civilized and cultured race is not equally applicable to a race of inferior civilization, and the failure to realize this fact and act upon it, by making special provision for the control of the negro popu lation in the southern states since slavery was abolished, is a fundamental reason for the disrepute into which legal procedure has fallen as regards negroes accused of offenses against the whites." It would be interest ing to know just what "special provision" would be equal to meet the case under the federal constitution. Certain it is that no invidious distinctions of citizens on account of race, color, or for any other cause, are permissible under our constitution and laws. And this applies with equal force with reference to punishments for the commis sion of crime as well as for social, economi cal, or other reasons. In the discussion of remedies for lynch ing, reference is had to the condition which prevails in all well-settled communities, rather than to conditions found in a fron tier society. The changed social conditions incident to a density of population in a frontier region, and the establishment of an adequate judiciary, remove the cause for the frontier type of lynch-law. It is the author's firm belief that "the only ultimate remedy for lynching is a strong public sentiment against it." But such a sentiment already exists in this country. The vast majority of our people, in theory, at least, are opposed to lynchlaw. And still the triumph of lawless force
