domiciled in a robber-infested section of the State of Jalisco, Mexico, once told me that he had organized all his neighbor rancheros into an armed corps, who, by waging unceasing war upon the banditti, had already almost cleared the district of the gentlemen of the road within two years. His plan was, whenever a number of them, two or three, were found lounging about the country, "without visible occupation or means of support," to go for them and shoot them on sight. In this way they avoided the delays and uncertainties of the law, and saved a great deal of unnecessary expense and waste of time. But, my friend, is it not possible that you sometimes make a mistake, and shoot a man who is not a highwayman? "Well, yes; I suppose we do, but the average is on the right side however!" was his emphatic and self-satisfied reply. The advocate of Lynch law generally took the same view of the case in California, and saw the regular courts and written laws take the place of Judge Lynch and summary justice with a sigh. And, in truth, there was some ground for their apprehension that society might not, immediately at least, gain greatly by the change.
In fact, if the plain truth must be told, Dame Justice in those days, as represented in our courts, was little better than a woman of the town; and she traveled so long in devious and crooked ways that she, became permanently disabled, and never fully recovered the free use of all her faculties, having a cast in her unbandaged eyes, and a peculiar shuffling limp in her gait as she walks, even to this hour.
