the
knowledge of methods for securing immense social improvements is in
existence; and to a determination to possess that knowledge and to apply
it to its legitimate ends--the organization of a social providence for
the ignorant and weak, and the binding of all classes of society into
relations of mutual sympathy and assistance.

All this, however, looks to a period of time, more or less, though it is
to be hoped not far, distant. In the meantime, while society remains
with its present constitution, riots are liable, and a practical
question still remains, of the method which should be pursued in dealing
with them. There is a time for all things, said a man of reputed wisdom.
And the time for considering the sufferings of a people or for being in
anywise tender hearted, is not when a madman or a cohort of madmen are
howling about your houses or your city, with knives and torches, blood
in their eyes, fiery rum in their veins, demoniac rage in their hearts,
and the instincts of hell in their natures. A mob has no mind, only
passions. It were as idle to attempt to make it listen to reason, as to
argue with a lunatic in the height of his frenzy. A mob is not only a
creature of passions, but of the worst passions. Every man has in him
more or less of the demoniac element, which, commonly, he is constrained
by the requirements of the society in which he lives to keep within
decent limits. A mob can never have an existence until the parties which
compose its nucleus, at least, have toppled from their customary
self-control, and passion has assumed the guidance. Then the devil, long
restrained and compressed, takes a holiday. As a high-mettled steed,
after being kept a long time within the narrow limits of his stable, and
being obliged to conduct himself in a staid manner, on being released,
runs, whisks his tail, kicks up his heels, lays back his ears, opens his
mouth, and rushes with mock vicious-looking eyes at whomsoever he meets,
and all this from mere wantonness, to enjoy his freedom; so the devil in
the man, not perchance the theological one, but still the devil no less
actually, as seen every day in the activity of the baser passions, on
being released, by the abdication of reason and the substitution of
feeling, begins to exercise his ingenuity in the play of his faculties,
compensating himself for his long confinement. From hour to hour, and
from day to day, this devil gets fuller possession of the individual,
who be