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some there are influences that lead them to take a peculiar direction, but they are punished by the law, and denounced by public opinion. In this case there was a merely nominal fine, and the assailant was immediately elevated into a hero. It was held to be a brave thing thus to attack an unarmed man, and a proof of moral courage, to perpetrate the outrage in the legislative halls of the Republic. On another recent occasion, and again in the capital, a person moving in the best society committed a deliberate and relentless murder in the open day. He was acquitted by the jury because the provocation was intolerable -a just reason for mitigating a sentence, but strange ground upon which to base a verdict. All this might deserve little notice, but the man was instantly adopted as an object of public sympathy and admiration, greeted with enthusiastic applause, and is now a Brigadier-General in the Northern army.

If the law can thus be broken by men in the highest position, not only with impunity, but with approval, it is not likely to be held in greater respect in the lower walks of life. The Loafer, the Rowdy, the Border Ruffian, have become prominent actors in the drama of American life, and they are not mere exceptional individuals, few in number, but large classes of society. Each of them has equal political power with the most intelligent of the country, and is a copartner in that sovereignty of the people, of which he not unfre

quently interprets his share to consist in the privilege of breaking laws at his sovereign will. The existence of this class leads to that tendency to outrage which no other country has ever witnessed in equal degree. Bowie knives, revolvers, brass knuckles-in the South, the barbarity of using slow fire as a means of executing negroes, when criminal; in the North, the frequent abuse of human nature on board ship, with such cruelty at times as draws piteous tears from other eyes-these are evidences of a recklessness of law which seems to be producing equal indifference to humanity. In Canada there are large tracts of border-country, and Australia is not wanting in the coarsest elements of population. In neither case are such facts to be met with; and we are driven to look to institutions special to the country as the sources of results so peculiar.

It may be said, that if the individual States thought proper to degrade their officers of justice, or lower their suffrage, or to deviate, as they have done in many directions, from the Federal standard, still this should not be regarded as necessarily chargeable to the Union. But these are results of that Union-the evidence by which it must be judged. Moreover, we shall find that the political alliance, which has given the supreme power to the violent, and overwhelmed the moderate, party, has been a direct result of this Union of conflicting interests.

Again, a Federal Government is inevitably a

weak government.

The circumstances of the

In

Union have aggravated this inherent weakness, by excluding the presence of rival or competitor. Had two Republics existed from the first, each would have constrained the other, in self-defence, to maintain a really efficient government. place of this there has been an entire absence of power, or control, or influence over the people, in their social or domestic politics; in other words, in all matters on which the purity and health of the body politic depend. In these respects the Federal Government has beheld the States diverging more and more widely from the original standard,-powerless to avert it. The Union excluded efficiency of government when it excluded all competition with itself.

Of this general inefficiency in administration there is a striking proof in Lynch law. An occurrence of this kind on some rare occasion would invite no comment; but it does invite serious reflection to find it tacitly understood throughout the country, that all have a right to resort to it when they consider the occasion to require it. Punishment is hardly attempted, if at all; for where such sentiments exist, it is clear that no jury will convict. Thus practically, whenever the popular will may choose to take the law into its own hands, it is silently permitted to do so. This practice appears to be the more prevalent in the South, mainly because occasions to invite it are much more rare in the North. No long time has

elapsed since the Erie Railway was attacked by the mayor of a town and his officials, the rails torn up, and serious damage perpetrated, as a mode of persuading the directors to make another station. Nor is it long since some of the people of New York, interested in property on Staten Island, destroyed the hospital there, spreading out the patients on the ground. It was desirable to them that it should be removed, and they did not consider it necessary to await the slow process of petition or argument.

Another proof of the unhealthy state into which the administration of the law has fallen, will be found in "Vigilance Committees." When the Rowdy class become too boisterous, or kill some one who is held in special regard, public opinion, which commonly regards them as a rough but excusable product of the soil, becomes indignant, and rouses itself to action. Men of substance, knowing that the laws are powerless, form themselves into a vigilance committee, and make a resolute assault on the strongholds of ruffianism. They are always successful, and for a time the atmosphere is cleared. Thus the interests of society have to be vindicated by force, and at the risk of life, because the execution of the laws is too feeble or corrupt, or the hordes of criminals are too powerful to be dealt with in any other

manner.

It would appear, indeed, that the real object of popular respect in the United States, is not law,

but force. Uncontrollable force in the peopledespotic force in party-unlicensed force in Lynch law-indignant force in vigilant committees— daring force in individual outrage-vigorous force, however employed, at once awakens latent sympathy, or commands intuitive respect. If this be kept in view it will explain occurrences that otherwise are incomprehensible. It may be that the sentiment grows naturally out of the theory of the sovereignty of the people-a power there can be nothing to control. What, indeed, is really the basis of extreme democracy, except brute force? But be its origin what it may, there can be little doubt as to its effect on reverence for law, or its danger to the permanence of institutions. The most popular of Presidents was Jackson, the nearest impersonation of it. Probably the most popular with the mass, at a future day, will be the Louis Napoleon whom universal suffrage will eventually produce, and this without the apology that exists in the magic of that name.

It may be argued that many of the evils referred to exist only in part of the country, and that we should not permit the impressions they create to be applied to the whole. It is, indeed, one of the difficulties arising from the magnitude of the Union, that no description can be drawn that will apply justly to every part of it. There are portions of the United States, and especially New

England, which in every moral attribute will compare advantageously with any district of any