576 STRANGE REMEDIES FOR STRANGE EVILS. Book III, 
or, if brought there by accident, could never have con- 
tinued to keep pace with its general tone of life. Some- 
thing approaching to these circumstances may exist in the 
gold regions of Australia, and more lately in those of British 
Columbia ; but even a society composed of similar ele- 
ments must be placed under the conditions of a self- 
government as absolute as that of California, to de- 
velop those eminent qualities to their full power. It 
is not without some foundation that Californians, more or 
less, assume the lofty pretensions of forming an elite, a 
society of men superior to others ; — a superiority, it is 
true, which may be characterized by bad as well as by 
good qualities. But if Californian life, accordingly, has 
had its extraordinary evils, it has found corresponding 
remedies to meet them ; and the improving energy on the 
one side has fully equalled the mischievous tendencies on 
the other. The insufficient wisdom of official legislators 
has been aided by the private laws and customs of the 
miners, strictly observed and enforced in their different 
districts ; and the insufficient integrity of judges, at a period 
when the bench was frequently occupied by unworthy 
characters, has been remedied by the direct interference of 
the citizens. Nobody doubts that innocent persons may 
have occasionally suffered supreme injustice from the irre- 
gular proceedings of excited masses ; but these proceedings, 
from the first turbulent crowd by which a poor fellow, 
guilty or innocent, was hanged to the next tree, up to the 
second " Vigilance Committee," by whom some old and 
incorrigible offenders were banished from the country and 
others executed, have cleared the State of a large proportion 
of its worst elements; and after it had once become more 
profitable to observe than to defy the laws of a decent and 
honest life, many a man who had been an enemy to social 
