speradoism and of the movements which
have checked it, there is no page more worth study than this from the
story of the great Golden State. The moral is a sane, clean, and strong
one. The creed of the "Committee of Vigilance" is one which we might
well learn to-day; and its practice would leave us with more dignity of
character than we can claim, so long as we content ourselves merely with
outcry and criticism, with sweeping accusation of our unfaithful public
servants, and without seeing that they are punished. There is nothing
but manhood and freedom and justice in the covenant of the Committee.
That covenant all American citizens should be ready to sign and live up
to: "We do bind ourselves each unto the other by a solemn oath to do and
perform every just and lawful act for the maintenance of law and order,
_and to sustain the laws when faithfully and properly administered_. But
we are determined that no thief, burglar, incendiary, assassin,
_ballot-box stuffer or other disturber of the peace_, shall escape
punishment, either by quibbles of the law, the carelessness of the
police or a laxity of those who pretend to administer justice."

What a man earns, that is his--such was the lesson of California.
Self-government is our right as a people--that is what the Vigilantes
said. When the laws failed of execution, then it was the people's right
to resume the power that they had delegated, or which had been usurped
from them--that is their statement as quoted by one of the ablest of
many historians of this movement. The people might withdraw authority
when faithless servants used it to thwart justice--that was what the
Vigilantes preached. It is good doctrine to-day.

Chapter VI

The Outlaw of the Mountains--_The Gold Stampedes of the '60's_--_Armed
Bandits of the Mountain Mining Camps_.

The greatest of American gold stampedes, and perhaps the greatest of the
world, not even excepting that of Australia, was that following upon the
discovery of gold in California. For twenty years all the West was mad
for gold. No other way would serve but the digging of wealth directly
from the soil. Agriculture was too slow, commerce too tame, to satisfy
the bold population of the frontier. The history of the first struggle
for mining claims in California--one stampede after another, as this,
that and the other "strike" was reported in new localities--was repeated
all over the vast region of the auriferous mountain lands lyi