LYNCHING IN AMERICA.
[To THE EDITOR 07 TER "SFECTATOR.1 Sin,—As you say, it was only to be expected that some American would come forward in palliation, if not in defence, of burning negroes alive. The really appalling thing is, not so much that these things sometimes happen, as that no one seems to mind about them when they do. One never hears that anybody has been called to account, for example, for the orgy of the murder of blacks which raged for some days in a northern State in 1908. You are conceding far too much in treating it as a matter for argument, whether burning alive is a barbarous punishment if imposed by the law ; hut, however that may be, no defence of legal burning can justify burning by lynch law. In answer to your correspondent's attempted defence, I would point out (1) that the burnings are by no means always for the cause alleged, witness the case of a negro burned for the alleged murder of a policeman in a northern State in August, 1911. (2) That, as you point out, they occur where the whole machinery of the law is in the hands of the whites. Mr. Wister, in the Virginian, well discriminates between the relatively excusable lynchings (of course they are not burnings) of, say, horse-thieves in sparsely populated and badly policed western states, and the lynching of negroes who are already lodged in jail either awaiting trial at the hands of white judges and juries or, as you say, actually convicted. (3) That the crime which your correspondent alleges as the justification for burning alive is not confined to America. It is a fairly frequent charge in our criminal courts, where, so far as I know, the difficulties of a judicial investigation, alleged by your correspondent, are not found to exist. If it be said that we know nothing here of the dangers of white women in southern states, does not that just confirm the notorious inefficacy of such barbarous methods ? You have been burning negroes by scores and for years, and this, you say, is the degree of security you have gained for your womenkind. And, one may ask, what of the record of white men with black women ? You, Sir, have been hammering away at Portuguese slavery, and rightly so, but can it truthfully be said that anything at San Thome, or in Turkey, or elsewhere for that matter, is comparable in barbarity to the burning of negroes in the country that, I suppose, considers itself in the van of civilization ? If the new President shows himself unable or unwilling to effect the improvement to which you invite him, I hope that so good a friend of America as the Spectator will not let the matter
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