LYNCH LAW

The irregular and revengeful species of justice administered by the populace in some parts of the United States, is said to have been so called from a Virgin i an farmer of the name of Lynch, who took the law into his hands on some occasion, by chasing a thief, tying him to a tree, and flogging him with his own hands. Some observers have thought that this barbarous system was, to a certain extent, palliated by the difficulty of enforcing regular law; which Captain Marryat {Diary in America) attributes, with what justice we know not, to the inadequate pay of the judicial establishment in the newly settled districts, and the bad character of many of the judges, raised to the bench by electioneering politics. He instances the case of a single town in Georgia, with 3000 inhabit.ints, in which there were in one year fifty-nine a a inations, as a proof of the occasional utility of some irregular acts of justice on the desperadoes of such a population. But it must surely contribute to brutalize and occasion crime, far more than to repre it. One of the most signal and violent acts of popular resentment, under the show of summary justice, was the mock trial and execution of a MACACUS. number of profe ed gamblers, at Vicksburg, on the Mi i ippi, four years ago. Mi Martin eau's work on America contains some fearful pictures of the persecution carried on, under the same pretences, against mi ionaries or supposed mi ionaries of the anti-slavery party, in the southern states. Indeed, she received a hint that she ran herself some danger of being " Lynched," if she visited them; which, however, did not affect her resolution. Lynch law may be called a democratic imitation of the old feudal Vehm-gerichte, or self constituted tribunals in Westphalia and elsewhere, which a umed the right of controlling the violent actions of the nobles, and have been the subject of so much romantic fiction. [s. 702]