quence of freedom from those restraints which obtain in law-abiding communities.
"Lynching is resorted to merely to appease and gratify an instinctive brutality on the part of a lawless element of the white race. No man can foresee the final results of such disorders. Nevertheless, it is evident that, if current individual usurpations of authority continue, all legal morality and social obedience will cease, our civilization will be erased, and barbaric methods will take the place of law and order. What the South needs is an enforcement of equitable law. Its mobs now exercise a tremendous discretionary power, of such far-reaching consequences as should make men pause in their madness.
"The question has been raised again and again as to why the national government does not take cognizance of local disorders, and use its authority for the suppression of lynching. But one familiar with the genius of our social organism will readily understand that constitutional limitations effectually intervene. The Federal government is limited to national interests. It is inhibited from taking cognizance of the acts of individual citizens, except as they may become trespassers upon national rights. Under existing conditions, then, national functions can neither deal with white lawlessness nor cope with black criminals, and no enactment by the Congress of the United States touching this matter would have the slightest standing in the Federal judiciary. (See Appendix, Note 5, for light on this point.) We do not doubt but that Congress has the constitutional right to enact a law for the trial and punishment of lynchers by United States courts, when the victims of mob vio-
