And State Papers 527 



ever after have the awful spectacle of his own handi- 

 work seared into his brain and soul. He can never 

 again be the same man. 



This matter of -lynching would be a terrible thing 

 even if it stopped with the'lynching of men guilty of 

 the inhuman and hideous crime of rape; but as a 

 matter of fact, lawlessness of this type never does 

 stop and never can stop in such fashion. Every vio- 

 lent man in the community is encouraged by every 

 case of lynching in which the lynchers go unpun- 

 ished to himself take the law into his own hands 

 whenever it suits his own convenience. In the same 

 way the use of torture by the mob in certain cases is 

 sure to spread until it is applied more or less indis- 

 criminately in other cases. The spirit of lawlessness 

 grows with what it feeds on, and when mobs with im- 

 punity lynch criminals for one cause, they are certain 

 to begin to lynch real or alleged criminals for other 

 causes. In the recent cases of lynching, over three- 

 fourths were not for rape at all, but for murder, at- 

 tempted murder, and even less heinous offences. 

 Moreover, the history of these recent cases shows the 

 awful fact that when the minds of men are habitu- 

 ated to the use of torture by lawless bodies to avenge 

 crimes of a peculiarly revolting description, other 

 lawless bodies will use torture in order to punish 

 crimes of an ordinary type. Surely no patriot can 

 fail to see the fearful brutalization and debasement 

 which the indulgence of such a spirit and such prac- 

 tices inevitably portends. Surely all public men, all 

 writers for the daily press, all clergymen, all teachers, 



