out the guilt and horrible deeds charged upon the
murdered victims comes from the mouth of the bloody handed wretches
who perpetrate the murders, yet they are not known according to
published accounts. But enough is known to get from their mouths same
horrible statements as to why this and that brutal murder was done,
and invariably, it is told with such oily tongues, and the whole
narrative is polished over and glossed with such skillfully
constructed lies, that the ruling millions lift up their hands in holy
horror and exclaim "they done him right."

Why, the very judges surrounded with court officers are powerless
before these bloody mobs. Prisoners are cruelly, fiendishly and
inhumanly dragged from their very custody. Sheriffs are as helpless as
new-born babes. I do not pretend to say that in no instance have the
victims been guilty as a whole or in part of some blood-curdling
crime, for men perpetrate lawless acts, revolting deeds, disgraceful
and brutal crimes, regardless of nationality, language or color, at
times. But civilization presurmises legal adjudication and the
intervention of that judicial authority which civilized legislation
produces. And when properly administered the accused is innocent till
he gets a fair trial; no verdict of guilt from a drunken lawless mob
should be accepted by a civilized country; and when they do accept it
they become a barbarous people. And a barbarous people make a
barbarous nation. Civilization knows no marauders, mobs or lynchers
and any one adjudged guilty by a drunken band of freebooters is not
guilty in the eyes of a civilized people. For the ruthless and violent
perpetrators of lawless deeds, especially when they are incarnate, are
murderers to all intents and purposes, and popular approval does not
diminish the magnitude of the crime. Millions may say, "Well done,"
but God, reason and civilization stamp them as culprits.

I confess that the United States has the highest form of civilized
institutions that any nation has had. Let us take a cursory glance at
the institutions in this country. It has common schools by the tens of
thousands; colleges and universities of every grade by the hundred;
millions of daily newspapers are flying from the press, and weekly
papers and monthly magazines on all imaginary subjects; it has a
Congress and President, Governors and State Legislatures without end,
judges, various courts and law officers in countless numbers. Hundreds
of tho