Lynch Law. the community in which it occurs as on the nation at largo, on our civilization and our form of government. It should be the right, as it is the duty, of the nation to vindicate itself. Then, too, the Federal power is best fitted to mete out punishment; no jury of the vicinage will ever convict their neighbors for lynching. They cannot differentiate lynching as a crime from lynching as a just punishment. Public sentiment is not suffi ciently opposed to lynching in the concrete, however much it may declaim against it in the abstract. When the anti-lynching law was before the Legislature of Georgia last year, a prominent member expressed the sen timent of that honorable body as follows : '•I think the Government is wasting effort trying to create a popular sentiment against lynching when a woman has been assaulted. It is love's labor lost; for lynching is inevit able so long as the crime which provokes it is committed. All laws on that line put on the statute books fall still born and are dead before they are promulgated. I say this be cause it is true." This confusion of ideas concerning lynching as a just punishment in any particular instance, and lynching as a crime against society, is very common through out the South; but it is a vital confusion and one that cannot be removed until law is rec ognized as King. One reason why the rule of law is not the force in this country that it is in Europe is because the local instruments of the law are not respected. A European respects the officers of the law as implicitly as an Eng lishman worships a duke. Not so with us. No man stands in awe of the judge or dis trict attorney or constable whom he helped
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to elect; who can bow in reverence to a con stable or a justice of the peace — the only representatives of the great institution we call " The Law," with which many of our lynching brothers come in contact. Many of the public representatives of law and order are not even respectable; sheriffs, legisla tors, attorneys, judges are often men of the greatest mediocrity; the public has no re spect for law. This fact helps to explain the change of the American spirit towards law and demonstrates the necessity of in voking some power to punish that will be re spected because it must be respected. The effect of bringing the power of the Federal Government home to the people will do more to root out lynching and the indif ference to lynching, than a century of edi torial homiletics. Continental countries are free from lynchings because the strong arm of the law is omnipresent; the soldiery and constabulary are to be found, or at least are often seen in the remotest hamlet. The at titude of the public towards law and its breaches is fixed; punishment is swift and certain. In many sections of our country the people never come in touch with the Federal Government except to buy its post age stamps; they never see its law officers, its soldiers, or its marshals; to them the justice of the peace and the county jailor are sole representatives of law and order. Lit tle wonder that lynching seems to them a right rather than a crime. Let the Federal Government step in and say thou shall not lynch as it has said thou shalt not counter feit or moonshine nor interfere with the mail, and a wholesome change will take place at once.
