attract anything more than an idle remark.

But you are perhaps ready to ask, "What has this to do with the
perpetuation of our political institutions?" I answer, it has much to
do with it. Its direct consequences are, comparatively speaking, but a
small evil, and much of its danger consists in the proneness of our
minds to regard its direct as its only consequences. Abstractly
considered, the hanging of the gamblers at Vicksburg was of but little
consequence. They constitute a portion of population that is worse
than useless in any community; and their death, if no pernicious
example be set by it, is never matter of reasonable regret with any
one. If they were annually swept from the stage of existence by the
plague or small-pox, honest men would perhaps be much profited by the
operation.--Similar too is the correct reasoning in regard to the
burning of the negro at St. Louis. He had forfeited his life by the
perpetration of an outrageous murder upon one of the most worthy and
respectable citizens of the city, and had he not died as he did, he
must have died by the sentence of the law in a very short time
afterwards. As to him alone, it was as well the way it was as it could
otherwise have been. But the example in either case was fearful. When
men take it in their heads to-day to hang gamblers or burn murderers,
they should recollect that in the confusion usually attending such
transactions they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is
neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is, and that, acting upon
the example they set, the mob of to-morrow may, and probably will, hang
or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so; the
innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law
in every shape, alike with the guilty fall victims to the ravages of
mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected
for the defence of the persons and property of individuals are trodden