* * * *

I must find some fault with the statement which has been made of the
events at Alton. It has been asked why Lovejoy and his friends did not
appeal to the executive--trust their defence to the police of the city?
It has been hinted that, from hasty and ill-judged excitement, the men
within the building provoked a quarrel, and that he fell in the course
of it, one mob resisting another. Recollect, sir, that they did act with
the approbation and sanction of the Mayor. In strict truth, there was
no executive to appeal to for protection. The Mayor acknowledged that
he could not protect them. They asked him if it was lawful for them to
defend themselves. He told them it was, and sanctioned their assembling
in arms to do so. They were not, then, a mob; they were not merely
citizens defending their own property; they were in some sense the
_posse comitatus_, adopted for the occasion into the police of the city,
acting under the order of a magistrate. It was civil authority resisting
lawless violence. Where, then, was the imprudence? Is the doctrine to
be sustained here that it is imprudent for men to aid magistrates in
executing the laws?

Men are continually asking each other, Had Lovejoy a right to resist?
Sir, I protest against the question instead of answering it. Lovejoy did
not resist, in the sense they mean. He did not throw himself back on the
natural right of self-defence. He did not cry anarchy, and let slip the
dogs of civil war, careless of the horrors which would follow. Sir, as
I understand this affair, it was not an individual protecting his
property; it was not one body of armed men resisting another, and making
the streets of a peaceful city run blood with their contentions. It did
not bring back the scenes in some old Italian cities, where family met
family, and faction met faction, and mutually trampled the laws under
foot. No! the men in that house were regularly enrolled, under the
sanction of the Mayor. There being no militia in Alton, about seventy
men were enrolled with the approbation of the Mayor. These relieved each
other every other night. About thirty men were in arms on the night
of the sixth, when the press was landed. The next evening, it was not
thought necessary to summon more than half that number; among these was
Lovejoy. It was, therefore, you perceive, sir, the police of the city
resisting rioters--civil government breasting itself to the shock of
lawless men.

Her