comes more and more an unreasoning creature, until a blind,
furious, brutal, bloodthirsty demon is all that remains of what might
have once been merely a not well balanced human being.

It is notorious that a mob will commit atrocities which a single
individual could scarcely be tempted to perpetrate. The reason is
partially evident from the statement just made. A more philosophical
explanation may be given. It is a law of social intercourse that there
is always among companies of individuals a more or less effective
contagion of whatever sentiment is most powerful among them. Still
further, this contagion or magnetic battery of sympathy, while pervading
the whole assembly, likewise increases the individual potency of the
sentiment in the mind of each person. It is for this reason, that an
orator thrills more deeply each hearer in a vast sympathetic assembly,
than he would the same individual in a less crowded company; that music
is more inspiring in a great crowd of people than elsewhere, etc. In an
assemblage where the finer sentiments are predominant, this contagion is
of the finer sort, and serves to elevate the whole company: in a
gathering where the lower passions preponderate, the contagion is of the
debasing kind, and serves to excite still further the worst elements of
brutality, and to sink the individuals which compose the company still
lower in the scale of humanity. To the educators of the young and to the
governors of the people, this law is of immense importance.

A mob is, therefore, not only under the influence of its worst passions,
but every hour of its existence these are growing more potent, in the
mob as an entity, and in the persons which compose it. The only true
mercy which can be shown to such an assembly, aside from any question of
the safety of community, is to suppress it; to suppress it at once; and
to use every means necessary to that end. Relentless rigor is the only
measure adequate to the occasion. It is the weakness of civilization
that it hesitates to be cruelly kind. The mistake of the military
authorities in regard to the New York riot, was lenity. The prompt and
vigorous bombardment, in the beginning of the rising, of a block of the
houses in which the rioters were safely ensconced, while covertly firing
on the soldiers and policemen, would have done more to quell the mob
than all subsequent proceedings, and would have saved life in the end.
It would have forced the inhabitants of