al, there was no room for
false witnesses; and where a punishment, not unfrequently
disproportioned to the offence, so rapidly and certainly followed its
commission, there was little prospect of impunity, and therefore slight
inducement to violate the law. In most localities, it required but few
severe lessons to teach desperadoes that prudence dictated their
emigration; and, it must be acknowledged, that the regulators were
prompt and able teachers.

But we should give only a partial and incomplete view of this
institution (for such, in fact, it was), were we to notice its uses and
say nothing of its abuse; because, like everything else partaking so
largely of the mob element, it was liable to most mischievous
perversions. Had the engine been suffered to rest, when it had performed
its legitimate functions, all would have been well; but the great vice
of the system was its obstinate vitality: it refused to die when its
life was no longer useful.

As soon as the danger was past, and the call for his services had
ceased, the good citizen, who alone could confine such a system to its
proper limits, retired from its ranks: it was consequently left, with
all its dangerous authority, in the hands of the reckless and violent.
The selfish and designing soon filled up the places of the sober and
honest, and from being a terror to evil-doers, and a protection to the
peaceful citizen, it became a weapon in the hands of the very men
against whom it should have been directed.

When this came to be the case, the institution was in danger of doing
more harm in its age, than it had accomplished of good in its youth. But
it must not thence be inferred that it should never have been adopted,
or that it was vicious in itself. In seasons of public danger,
extraordinary powers are often intrusted to individuals--powers which
nothing but that danger can justify, and which would constitute the
dictators intolerable despots, if they were retained after the crises
are passed. The Congress of our confederacy, for example, found it
necessary, at one period of our Revolutionary struggle, to invest
Washington with such authority; had he exercised it beyond the pressure
of immediate peril, the same outcry which has been made against others
in similar circumstances, would have been justly raised against him. And
most men, less soberly constituted than Washington, would have
endeavored to retain it; for power is a pleasant thing, which few have
t