SOCIETY. 373 



was to be taken, nothing of the main purpose was communi- 

 cated, save to a few oflScers. The executive committee had 

 really an absolute power. Their orders were implicitly 

 obeyed. Whom they ordered into arrest, was arrested ; whom 

 they ordered into banishment, was banished. Their trials were 

 secret ; a counsellor was granted to the accused, but a coun- 

 sellor who was himself a member of the executive committee, 

 and of course bound to sustain his associates. The executive 

 committee exercised these great powers -svith great modera- 

 tion and wisdom, and without pay ; and all the men whom 

 they executed or banished, undoubtedly deserved all the 

 punishment inflicted on them. After the vigilance committee 

 was disbanded, the executive committee lost all its powers, 

 and returned to the position of simple citizens. Such is a brief 

 statement of the character of the vigilance committee of San 

 Francisco, an organization without its like in American his- 

 tory ; a secret society, ruled by a secret executive committee, 

 whose names were unknown to the public, and even to the men 

 pledged to obey them, whose meetings were secret, and of 

 whose proceedings no report was published either at that 

 time or since. The maintenance of the organization in defi- 

 ance of the law, was expensive and troublesome, and it is not 

 expected that it will ever be revived ; yet the temper of the 

 people is such that, rather than submit to the sway of ruffians, 

 who had power in San Francisco in 1855, they would certainly 

 re-establish the vio^ilance committee. 



§ 262. Lynch Executions. — Xo association similar to the 

 vigilance committee has ever been formed in California out- 

 side of San Francisco. There have been many executions by 

 lynch law, but there was no permanent organization, delib- 

 erate trial of the accused, and delay in the execution of the 

 sentence, which marked the proceedings at San Francisco. In 

 the interior, the lynching is always done by a mob ; they may 

 act without much noise, and give the accused several hours' 

 respite before swinging him up, but it is only a mob after all. 

 The people come together in a state of excitement, and dis- 



