SOCIETY. 373 
was to be taken, nothing of the main purpose was communi- 
cated, save to a few officers. 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 with 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 vigilance committee. 
§ 262. Lynch Executions.—No 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. 
‘rhe people come together in a state of excitement, and dis- 
