here are some scoundrels in society on whom the laws take no
effect; the most expeditious and short way is to let a majority decide
and give them_ JUSTICE."
Let the reader notice, 1st, that this outrage was perpetrated with
great deliberation, and after it was over, the victim was commanded to
leave town by the next week: when that cooling interval had passed,
the outrage was again deliberately repeated. 2d. It was perpetrated by
"thirty persons,' "_the most respectable in the city_." 3d. That at
the second lynching of Fife, several of his neighbors who had gathered
to defend him, (seeing that all the legal officers in the city had
refused to do it, thus violating their oaths of office,) _were knocked
down_, to which the editor adds, with the business air of a
professional butcher, "nothing _serious_ occurred!" 4th. That not a
single magistrate in the city took the least notice either of the
barbarities inflicted upon Fife, or of the assaults upon his friends,
knocking them down, &c., but, as the editor informs us, all "seemed to
acquiesce in the proceedings." 5th. That this conduct of the
magistrates was well pleasing to the great mass of the citizens, is
plain, from the remark of the editor that "every one supposed that the
whole subject was ended," and from his wondering exclamation, "WHAT
WAS OUR ASTONISHMENT to hear that Mr. C.R. Kinney had actually took
upon him to examine witnesses," &c., and also from the editor's
declaration, "Such an excitement we never before witnessed in our
town." Excitement at what? Not because the laws had been most
impiously trampled down at noon-day by a conspiracy of thirty persons,
"the most respectable in the city;" not because a citizen had been
twice seized and publicly tortured for hours, without trial, and in
utter defiance of all authority; nay, verily! this was all
complacently acquiesced in; but because in this slaveholding Sodom
there was found a solitary Lot who dared to uplift his voice for _law_
and the _right of trial by jury_; this crime stirred up such an uproar
in that city of "most respectable" lynchers as was "_never witnessed
before_," and the noble lawyer who thus put every thing at stake in
invoking the majesty of law, would, it seems, have been knocked down,
even in the presence of the Court, if the blow had not been "parried."
6th. Mark the murderous threat of the editor--when he arraigns the
_acts_," (no matter how murderous) "of thirty citizens of this plac
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