Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 155 



his foe with a rifle; sharp practice in the East be- 

 comes highway robbery in the West ; but at the same 

 time negative good-nature becomes active self-sacri- 

 fice, and a general belief in virtue is translated into 

 a prompt and determined war upon vice. The 

 ne'er-do-well of a family who in one place has his 

 debts paid a couple of times and is then forced to 

 resign from his clubs and lead a cloudy but innocu- 

 ous existence on a small pension, in the other abrupt- 

 ly finishes his career by being hanged for horse- 

 stealing. 



In the backwoods the lawless led lives of aban- 

 doned wickedness ; they hated good for good's sake, 

 and did their utmost to destroy it. Where the bad 

 element was large, gangs of horse-thieves, high- 

 waymen, and other criminals often united with the 

 uncontrollable young men of vicious tastes who were 

 given to gambling, fighting, and the like. They then 

 formed half-secret organizations, often of great ex- 

 tent and with wide ramifications; and if they could 

 control a community they established a reign of 

 terror, driving out both ministers and magistrates, 

 and killing without scruple those who interfered 

 with them. The good men in such a case banded 

 themselves together as regulators and put down the 

 wicked with ruthless severity, by the exercise of 

 lynch law, shooting and hanging the worst off- 

 hand. 55 



68 The regulators of backwoods society corresponded ex- 

 actly to the vigilantes of the Western border to-day. In 

 many of the cases of lynch law which have come to my 

 knowledge the effect has been healthy for the community ; 



