LYNCH LAW

The irregular and revengeful species of justice administered by the populace in some pans 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. 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. 708]