LYNCH-LAW AT NEW ORLEANS.

Die sudden rise and subsidence of what is called the Revolu- tionary movement in New Orleans may well cause surprise in Europe. By one mail we hear of a state of affairs in one of the chief cities of the United States which seems to indicate a dissolu- tion of law and order, and to precede a merely chaotic social condition ; and by the next packet we find that the incident is completely at an end, and noticed only on that ground. It would be considered strange if a body of Liverpool citizens were to appear armed in the streets, and to issue a manifesto from some Committee-room declaring that, being dissatisfied with the management of public affairs in Liverpool, the undersigned had warned the mayor and other magistrates to surrender their offices, and commit the entire administration of law and order to self- appointed successors. Great would be the astonishment if mayor and magistrates obeyed the command (after more or less hesita- tion) and remained stripped of their functions, or ignominiously resumed them when permitted by the usurping body. Any Fnglislunsn, German, or even Frenchman, would say that where such a transaction could take place, law and order were a mere name, and social security was altogether absent.

What would the people of New Orleans say,—what do they say, —about such an adventure as they have just gone through ? We

may judge of their view of their own code by their way of treating

other instances of the same form of Lynch-law, less flagrant, per- haps, than this last, but appealing to the same principles. In the

first instance on record in the country, there was no difference of opinion, and the strictest upholder of law would not be severe on the impromptu judge and his acts. In the days when the Minds_

sippi valley was a wilderness, and the few settlers who had mane for themselves a lodge in it, found themselves robbed, they ear. ried a suspected person before a sensible farmer whose name was

Lynch for judgment ; and a sentence of flogging was passed and executed. " Lynch-law" has grown, between that day and this till we see it deposing the authorities, and wielding the destinies

of a metropolitan city ; and we naturally desire to know where it is to stop. Perhaps the citizens would be glad of an answer to the same question : but it is next to impossible on the spot to get any sort of reply.

The second stage of Lynch-law was that of the powers of Judge Lynch being assumed where law was professed to exist, but was difficult to enforce. When a settlement has advanced so far as to have a court-house, as well as a church, but the judge was not confided in, and the constable a man of no great mark or nerve, it was a rather popular proceeding for two or three resolute house- holders to dismiss suspicious strangers, or overrule legal decisions, and, in short, preserve order in the way most convenient on the spot, and at the moment. There is, throughout the Union, an immense amount of the virtue of acquiescence which is sometimes too hastily supposed to flourish most in ancient countries and under despotic rule. It may be doubted whether submission to a strong will, individual or popular, is so conspicuous anywhere as in democratic republics ; and of all democratic societies that of the United States is the most prone to acquiescence in other people's responsibility, because of the presence of an anomaly which must one day explode the whole fabric of the republic, unless it can be drawn off in some harmless way ; and because no man desires to be the agent of the catastrophe, by offering resistance which may strike out sparks by which the explosive train may be fired, and the Union shivered to fragments. Whether the apprehension be well grounded or absurd, such is its nature ; and the growth of Lynch-law is its result. The next stage is that of infliction of punishment by the authorities themselves, in obedience to a popular cry, and with- out any attention to the forms of justice. Hanging without trial is not unfrequent in places where there is risk in delay ; as in the notorious Vikesburg case twenty years ago, when,. in order to get rid of some gamblers and other scamps, such as infest the whole series of towns on the Mississippi, several harmless slaves and one or two innocent travellers were hanged together with the black- legs in a long row. From this the step is easy to inflicting penal- ties without the intervention of the magistracy ; and the burning alive of negroes, and the tarring and feathering of strangers who have a newspaper in their pockets, or booksellers who have un- authorized books in their stock, follows of course. Almost from week to week we now see notices of the action of leading citizens

(generally, in the form of committees of vigilance) in expelling

residents from their abodes and neighbourhood, on the first breath of suspicion of their entertaining opinions hostile to slavery. Norfolk, in Virginia, thus "ran off" two citizens and their fami- lies, on the 1st of last month,—compelling not only the gentle- men to take instant flight, but their wives and children to depart within twenty-four hours, " never to return." " The Commit- tee appointed to ship or tar and feather" (for so their commission ran) these sufferers on mere suspicion are an illustration of a somewhat advanced stage of Lynch-law. In the northern section of the Union, the manifestation differs in practice from that of the south, while the principle is nearly the same. In the Slave States, the citizens are a small part of the population ; and nearly the whole of them are occupied in guard- ing their own estates ; so that the disposable force of "public opinion " is exceedingly small : whereas in the Free States every man is a citizen ; and when there is any Lynch-law, it is exhi- bited on a grand scale. We need only refer to the burning of the convent at Charlestown, Boston, some years ago, and the de- struction of the great hall at Philadelphia, in the early days of abolitionism ; and the riots at New York in 1834, when several citizens' houses were burned, and their furniture made a bonfire of in the streets. The idea was of danger to the public peace, or to popular liberties from the institution, or the parties attacked, now a convent, now a masonic organization, and now an anti-

slavery agitation : and the mob was, in all these cases, composed of " gentlemen of property and standing." As the great "diffi- culty " of the Republic has become more menacing, and is recog-

nized as more immediately vital, a remarkable change has come over the aspect of the Lynch-law of the north and south. Such Lynch-law as has been charged against the north by the south of late years has been simply a defiance of the Fugitive Slave-law, and not a violation of any rights and liberties whatever, but those which the slave-owner claims over his fugitive property. The northern vigilance committees are organized in defiance, it is true, of that particular federal law ; but, for the most part, they

claim to act, like those of Massachusetts, in defence of the laws of their respective States, as well as in accordance with all the principles of free government. These committees are always 011 thewatch to protect free negroes from kidnappers, and to secure to fugitives the rights of the country they enter. Frequent and serious opposition to the federal authorities is involved in this ; and the charge of law-breaking is vehemently urged from the south. The obvious reply is, that a nearer and dearer (to say nothing of its being a higher and better,) law is defended than is defied. True as this may be, the state of things is one which cannot be long protracted. The only alternative is a reconciliation of the federal law with that of the States, or a dissolution of the Union.

In the south, meantime, the encroachments of Lynch-law are more serious than even collisions between two systems of law in the north. In the Californian case, there was some painful doubt whether the usurpation of the powers of the magistracy was not a political movement in fact, though a police one in pretence ; but there was something so unquestionable in the presence and ac- tion of a rabble of scamps, whom the authorities did not get rid of, that public gratitude and sanction waited on the courageous citizens who set aside a corrupt or feeble local government, and made a clearance of the murderers, highwaymen, gamblers, and brawlers, who made the place a hell to their neighbours. Be- yond the bounds of California, the movement was regarded with great doubt and apprehension, as the destruction of the last se- curity of the commonwealth. The doubt and apprehension are much aggravated by the re- newal of the experiment at New Orleans last month. Was it the same experiment ? At first few had any doubts ; or if they had them, they did not utter them. There were scamps at New Orleans too ; and murders, and gambling and brawls. These evils are always rife in a city so ill-conditioned in many respects as New Orleans : but the respectable inhabitants declare that for two or three years past, it has degenerated into a mere refuge of desperadoes, and that either the reputable or the disreputable por- tion of society must go away. It is obviously true that the fili- bustering gentry, who are understood to be anything but good neighbours, have lowered even the low character of New Orleans by gathering and agitating there. Whether the late Vigilance Committee had its eye on these gentry, or on scamps who do not offer any patriotic pretensions, it possessed itself of the city, the law and its offices ; and cannon were posted in the streets, and sentinels and guards patrolled the Levee, as if in the presence of civil war.

With the elections, the whole manifestation ended. The patriotic vision melted away, and the magistrates have sneaked back into office ; whence they ought not to have been dislodged without better reasons than have yet been rendered. It is de- clared on the spot that the Vigilance Committee wanted to control the elections. We have yet to hear their own account of their conduct, that is, why they gave way before they had effected the purification of their city which they gave as a reason for their usurpation.

The one observation always offered by Americans when Lynch- law is talked of is, that in their republic the people are more nearly the law-makers than the citizens of any other country ; and that they therefore so represent the law-making power as to be more justifiable than other peoples in superseding the general and permanent law by a special and provisional one. The obvious reply is—" Be it so, if you choose : but you must take the con- sequences in the instability of your form of society, and the dis- trust of other nations." There is nothing in the name of absolu- tism or republicanism which can reconcile free nations to the spectacle of lawlessness. Usurpation looks to them much the same whether it is effected by a Prince of an Imperial house or by a Vigilance Committee of republicans. The question which interests the world is whether a state is in an organic stage, work- ing regularly under a system of law, or in a critical stage, when law is ousted by force. Confidence or distrust depends on the reply. The mom consolation, in the case of the United States, is, that the observance of law has improved wherever the people have washed their hands of slavery. We are justified by this in hoping that it is not the observance of law that will be given up, but either slavery, or the Union, which will have become ill- assorted whenever one party insists on its right to play fast and loose with the law, and the other on the duty of abiding by it. Mournful as would be the spectacle of the dissolution of the Union, it would be better than that of a compact of lawlessness, to sustain the empty name.