Hesperothen; Notes from the West, Vol. 2 (of 2) / A Record of a Ramble in the United States and Canada in the Spring and Summer of 1881

by Sir William Howard Russell

I do not think the rule "By their fruits shall ye know them" can be applied to the public schools, in connection with the prevalence of crime, immorality, unbelief, or eccentric religion. But it is certain the system has not by any means secured that high level of general education, or what education is supposed to bring with it, which its friends claim for it in the States. There is reason to believe that the standard of morality has not been uniformly high in the political world, and that in the public intelligence the judiciary does not aspire to an absolute immunity from suspicion. Even in the old settled States, legislators from time to time may be found, who, seated among the good and wise, excite admiration akin to that which is aroused by the spectacle of a fly in amber. It has been observed by travellers that whatever affection may exist in families, it does not attain that keen sensibility and lasting power which is found in French domestic life.

When American newspapers of the greatest influence and circulation write invectives against the corruption which prevails in places high and low, when writers of great intelligence and known character contribute similar articles to periodicals which possess the highest position in the literary world of America, a stranger may be permitted perhaps to say a few words respecting the impression produced upon his mind by what he heard and read on the subject when he was in the country, without it being alleged that he attempts to assail the principles of free government, or to make invidious charges or wholesale accusations against a nation. I know too well the force with which Americans could retort if they were so minded, and how they could point to the reports of election judges which set forth the prevalence of extensive bribery, led to the suspension of writs, and will perhaps end in the disfranchisement of some ancient and populous boroughs and constituencies in England, and to the speeches of Sir Henry James in Parliament, to cast any stone out of my glass house on that score; but I do not think it can be established that persons in a position at all analogous to that of the members of a State Legislature have been purchased wholesale in England, Ireland or Scotland, or that even a complete Borough Corporation had been bought up. Now, nothing was more common in the Far West than to hear it stated openly that Senator So-and-so had bought his place, and that Mr. So-and-so had purchased a State Legislative body in order to "get through" some railway or other scheme. That was accepted in fact as a matter of course, and not contradicted or questioned by any one. We heard from time to time of the sums which So-and-so would expend to buy his senatorship, and of the money actually paid to secure the passage of a line from the legislature of O—— and the like, whilst stories relating to the purchase of judges were common in the conversation of the hotels and cars.

I do not aver that these stories were true. I only know that they passed current and were not challenged by those who were around us. "Thoughtful persons," who exist in the United States as well as in the vicinity of Pall Mall clubs, lament, deplore and hate the evils of growing corruption with all the fervour of honest and powerless natures. The mechanism is scarcely concealed. It stands before the world with less attempt at disguise than the gallows in the gaol. Mr. Parton, in the 'North American Review' of this July, writing on the power of public plunder, says: "At present, in the ninety-fifth year of the Constitution, we are face to face with a state of politics of extreme simplicity, of which money is the motive, the means and the end. What was the last Presidential election but a contest of purses? The longest purse carried the day, and it carried the day because it was the longest. Some innocent readers perhaps have wondered why the famous orators who swayed vast multitudes day after day and night after night, have not been recognised in the distribution of office. They were paid in cash from ten dollars a night to a thousand dollars a week." And then he goes on to describe the business in detail, and to show what this power is. He says: "There is a boss in the city of New York who will take a contract for putting a gentleman into Congress. Pay him so much and you may go to sleep, wake up and find yourself member elect. A boss is a man who can get to the polls on election days masses of voters who care little or nothing for the issues of the campaign and know of them still less. They operate upon the strangers in the land who are unable to use its language and are unacquainted with its politics." Mr. Parton describes with humour one of these "bosses," an improvement on the pugilists and cormorant thieves of a remote period. "The Emerald Isle gave him birth; the streets of New York, education. To see the brawny, good-tempered Irishman walking abroad in his district when politics are active is to get an idea of how the chief of a clan strode his native heath when a marauding expedition was on foot. He lives in a handsome house, and has more property than any man has ever been able to get by legitimate service to the United States. He treats his dependants and retainers nobly, but as the agent and organiser of spoliation he is a prey to every minor scoundrel, for at certain seasons he dare not say no to any living creature. And yet it requires tact, self-possession and resource to move about among needy people with a pocket full of money, an embodied "yes," and have some of it left after the election. The strikers, as they are called, go for solid cash now instead of target companies and clambakes for which the candidates paid the bills." "Money, money," exclaims Mr. Parton, "everywhere in politics, in prodigal abundance, money, except where it could secure and reward good service for the public, hecatombs for the wolves, precarious bones for the watchdogs." The details in the article are precise, and if they are to be trusted it may be doubted whether the claims of the United States to possess a cheap government can be maintained, for it is not cheap to pay responsible executive officers a precarious pittance per annum if now and then it costs a million dollars to change them. Mr. Secretary Blaine has thrice declared that the election in October 1880 in the State of Maine, a model New England State, was carried by money. His opponents declared that he and his party were as bad, and that they too flooded the towns with money. What renders the situation more dangerous is the fact that the men who provide the money for running these enormously expensive political combinations are either seekers after, or holders of, office, and the inference is that they seek to control Government, or, as Mr. Parton puts it, that "the Government is coming to be rather an appendage to a circle of wealthy operators than a restraint upon them." That is indeed a serious proposition, and the result of observation goes to support the idea that it is valid. The small man is in office, but the big man, his master, is outside. The mischief is brought prominently forward in connection with the sale of public lands in the North-West, which have been claimed as the heritage of the people, and indeed of all the nations of the world. The government land attracted the hardy labour of all countries, covering the western west with thriving towns and populous counties. But now the prairies are skinned by rich men, by "land-grabbers," people who buy up tracts of twenty thousand or thirty thousand acres wherever they can lay their hands upon them, evading the law and filling the western world with roving labourers who work on these prodigious farms in summer and starve in winter. This is, we are told, the result of "government by lobby."

Occasionally there is an exceeding great and bitter cry over all this from the depths of the body politic. Some great paper in a moment of deep mental agony publishes an article like that, to which I have called attention, by Mr. Parton; occasionally some preacher, nobly daring, thinks it necessary to direct attention, from his pulpit, to the progress of corruption. Dr. Talmage delivered a very remarkable discourse whilst I was in America on the text from Job. xv. 34: "Fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery." Although I do not profess exactly to understand to what particular sect he belongs, he is one of the leaders of religious thought, dividing with Beecher and others the popular favour in the Empire City. The State buildings at Albany ought to be heavily insured if the reverend gentleman's vaticinations are right. It was an American discourse. I cannot give the whole oration. The people of the Brooklyn Tabernacle were presented with a muster-roll of the people who had distinguished themselves amongst the great ones of the world. Cobden, Brougham, O'Connell and Rowland Hill were placed in juxtaposition as leaders on our side of the water. Of course it was impossible to resist the allusion to Francis Bacon and to Macclesfield; but it was scarcely correct to say that the Lord Chancellor Whiteberry—I presume a misprint for Westbury—"perished," nor do I quite understand what the preacher meant by the awful tragedy of the Credit Mobilier. Washington, Ben Butler, and John McClean were linked together for the benefit of Americans. They were, Dr. Talmage declared, great politicians, but "out of politics there has come one monstrous sin, potent and pestiferous, its two hands rotten with leprosy, its right hand deep in its breeches pocket. This is bribery." Dr. Talmage called upon the American people to judge the crime. "Under the temptation of this sin," he exclaimed, "Benedict Arnold sold the fort in the Highlands for thirty-one thousand three hundred and seventy-five dollars; Gorgy betrayed Hungary, Ahitophel forsook David, Judas killed Christ. I think," he says, "when I see the strong men who have gone down, of the Red Dragon in Revelation, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon its head, drawing the third part of the stars of heaven after it." And therefore he proceeds to preach against bribery. He thought it was the right time, "because the Legislature in New York is busy in investigating charges of bribery. The whole country woke up in holy horror at the charge that two thousand dollars had been offered to influence a vote in the Legislature, as if this was something new; as though in one State nine hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars had not been paid a legislator of the State Government by a railway company to get its charter and secure a dedication of public lands; as though three-quarters of the legislators of the United States had not, through bribery, gone into putrefaction whose stench reached heaven. After a few weeks' hunting the squirrel has stolen the hickory nut. Gentlemen in New York hunt out wrong by day and play poker and old sledge at night at Delavan House. It was like the country which had spent six millions of dollars in lawsuits about William Tweed going suddenly into hysterics when it found out that he had stolen a box of steel pens. California is submerged in the grip of a great monopoly; in Kansas United States senators had been involved in charges of bribery; in Connecticut an election to Congress was bought as men might buy a box of strawberries. Last year they were convicted of attempting bribery in Pennsylvania, but the Court of Pardons liberated them with the exception of two judges, who were told that they would be cut off from political preferment for their obstinacy. A Pennsylvania United States senator used to put a price on legislators just as a Kentuckian puts a price on his horse." But it was not legislators alone that Dr. Talmage attacked. He declared that the railways, the common carriers of the country, were tainted by a favouritism which was, in fact, the result of bribery. One company made rebates in its fares to some favoured corporation, as in the case of a petroleum company, which was enabled to control the price of that light all over the world in consequence of a virtual monopoly that was given to it by arrangement with the railway. In the same way merchandise in grain, provisions, and cattle are placed in the hands of a few firms. "How much," asks Dr. Talmage, "did it cost the Elevated Railroad to keep the fare from dropping to five cents from ten cents? I have been told," said he, "three hundred thousand dollars," which is 60,000l. "Very seldom does a bill pass through any of our Legislatures if there be no money in it. Sometimes the bribery is in bank bills, sometimes in railroad passes, sometimes in political preferment, sometimes by the monopolies given to the legislators, what are called points, a corner, a flier, a cover, washing the street, salting down, ten up! If you want to know what these are, ask the bribed members at Albany and Harrisburg." Then he goes on, with some truth, to declare that the bribery begins far away behind all this; that it is really with the money subscribed for election expenses that the evil begins its course. "From the big reservoirs of subscribed election expenses the little rills roll down in ten thousand directions, and by the time the great gubernatorial, congressional, and presidential elections are over, the land is drunk with bribery." Perhaps it is quite as well that it is from an American orator and from an American writer such statements and such indictments proceed, rather than from a stranger like myself; but it is very clear that the evil which De Tocqueville indicated long ago has spread rather than diminished, and there is reason to think that it will do so until the public conscience of a great people is aroused to a sense of the enormity of the mischief. But it lies far down towards the base of the national institutions, and any attempt to extirpate it will fail until the doctrines of the "Spoils to the Victors" be rejected from the political catechism, and the interests of party made the means and not the end of political life.

The letters which appeared in the Morning Post, written under the influence of the surprise and anger I felt at the extent and impunity of crimes of violence and the state of feeling, or want of it, respecting them in the West, were badly received in America, and were severely handled by a few papers, as I was informed; I expected that the mention of the subject would not prove agreeable, though I guarded myself most sedulously from a single offensive word—nay, went out of my way to palliate the offences against life and living, and to excuse the people who allowed them, whilst I most carefully drew the line—a broad one—between these border ruffians and the law-abiding, virtuous people of the settled States. I was not, however, prepared for misrepresentation. One would have thought that I accused the kind hosts who had received us—our generous entertainers in so many cities—the courteous, polished gentlemen who accompanied us—of murder and robbery, and ascribed to them the brutal murders committed by Canty or the Kid. As I quoted chapter and verse, and as the papers which vilified me could not deny the statements, they wrote that I had been imposed upon by the vivid fancy—in other phrase, the deliberate lying—of their brother editors in the West. One organ had the effrontery to declare that the Duke of Sutherland expressed his delight at the kind and courteous treatment of the ruffians I denounced; adding, "somebody lied—it was not the Duke." No. It was not indeed! A friend sent me one of these, and below an article in which it was said that I might take my place "beside Basil Hall, Mrs. Trollope, and Dickens for libelling the people of the United States," and that my stories were all inventions, there was a pregnant commentary as follows:—"Sunday, July 17th: Daring Train Robbery; Bandits Boarding Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Cars; The Conductor and a Passenger Shot Dead, and the Safe in the Express Car Robbed; the Passengers Saved by a Brakeman."

I hope it will not be imagined that I have any desire to cast obloquy on the grand efforts, supremely successful as they have been, to turn the prairie and the desert to the uses of civilised man and of the world, and to open up the Western Continent to humanity and civilisation. I am too sensible of the courtesy, ready service, and hospitality everywhere accorded to the party of English travellers of which I was one, to write one word which I thought calculated to give pain or offence to any of our many friends or to any right-minded American. Maculæ solis! 'Tis a pity they are there! In a few years, perhaps, the memory that such things were will have passed away like the recollection of some evil dream. But public sentiment must make itself felt, and above all there must be some abatement of the maudlin sympathy, which is virtually on the side of crime, if it be active in averting punishment.

Crime in America, especially in the Eastern States, is very much the same as it is in other countries, but in the far West there is more recklessness in dealing with human life, which, in spite of the Howard Society and of humanitarians, I believe to be connected with the indulgence extended under State laws by American judges and juries to criminals who appear to be deserving of nothing but the strict and unmitigated application of the rope. "Property" is safe, for the citizens hunt down with extraordinary energy marauders whose object is simply plunder. Ordinary robbers and gangs of burglars are speedily and summarily suppressed. It is otherwise with those who assail life and limb. The desperadoes who infest the "saloons," as they are called, with which every western settlement is sure to be provided as soon as the shingle roofs are placed on the earliest upheaval of deal planks which can be called a dwelling, have far greater immunity and freedom than burglars or robbers. Wherever the train stopped for water on our journey in New Mexico, Western Colorado, or Eastern California, a rectangular wooden box, with a verandah, open doors, windows screened by a muslin curtain, perhaps a flagstaff with the Stars and Stripes flying, a large signboard, and some high-sounding name—the "Grand Alliance," "Union League," "El Dorado," "Harmonium," "Arcadia," or the like—was visible, with the usual group of booted and bearded miners, and their horses hitched up at the door-posts in front; inside you would be certain to find men of the same class at a bar, behind which, known for miles around, the affable Charlie, Bill, or Bob was dispensing drinks and mixing cocktails, slings, and the other drinks, in which the badness of the spirit is artfully disguised by a stimulant of a more active character and more pronounced flavour, known as "bitters," and kept in subjugation by the liberal use of ice. For even in these burning regions ice is stored up as the one thing needful. The rudest miner is accustomed to it; iced drinks are consumed by classes in America far below the social level of those who never taste them in this country.

As the train was halting at Colorado Springs the stewards engaged in an animated discussion respecting a certain erection of poles and rafters just visible in an adjacent field. "I tell you dat's it." "I say tidn't." They were discussing the probability of the scaffolding being the gallows whereon "Canty, the Buena Vista murderer," was to be hanged the day after. On April 29th, last year, Mr. Canty was standing on the platform in front of Lake-house with "Johnny the Ham," "Curly Frank," and "Off Wheeler," when Thomas Perkins appeared in an alley opposite, endeavouring "to induce 'Dutch Bill' to go with him to the office of Justice Casey, who had deputised him for the purpose." Canty and his companions at once ran across and demanded his release. Before Perkins could answer, Canty fired and missed him. The second shot wounded Perkins in the arm; the latter drew his pistol, but before he could use it Canty fired; the ball shattered the constable's hand. "For God's sake," he exclaimed, "is there no policeman to help me?" He fell, and Canty, walking close to his side, coolly sent a bullet through his body. He was arrested, tried, and convicted. His counsel applied to the Supreme Court for a supersedeas, but the court, after solemn argument, refused the application. Then they applied to the Governor of the State, but Mr. Pitkin, though "a weak-kneed man," would neither grant a reprieve nor a commutation to imprisonment for life. There was, he said, no ground "to set aside a verdict of a competent jury and the district judge reviewed and approved of by the Supreme Court." In the very last hour a woman came forward, and the Denver paper gave verbatim et literatim the text of the document in which ... "with dew regard," she offered Sheriff Spangler $50,000 (10,000l.) to save the life of W. H. Canty, her cousin, whose real name was, she said, N. H. Salisbury. "I entreat you to have him spared till you have an interview with me." She added that "Jennings and his brother in Leadville would pay a still larger sum. You may have ample means for life," &c. A gentleman of the press, who came into our train at South Arkansas, was present at the execution. Just before the drop fell, Canty, who had expressed complete confidence in his ultimate liberation till the day before his execution, spoke for fifteen minutes, protesting his innocence. Then he exclaimed, "Good-bye, nothing can save me. I have faith in the Saviour and a hereafter." The trap was sprung, but to the horror of every one, the rope broke at the beam. The murderer's neck, however, was dislocated, and "a happy relief was experienced" when it was found he had died a painless death. As he was the nephew of an eminent statesman it was expected his friends would take action as to the disposal of his remains, which were put "in a neat casket at the sheriff's expense." In the journal there was a woodcut of the murderer. "Before his likeness could be taken holes were bored in the door and Canty was lashed to it, and then, when the door was set upright, the photographer watched a favourable opportunity when the head and eyes were quiet and secured the impression" from which the engraving was made. He was not so fortunate as Frank Gilbert, who was sentenced to be hanged the following day for a brutal murder, but respited, "in order that the proceedings may be reviewed by the highest judicial tribunal," by Governor Pitkin at the last moment, "till July 29," the day on which Rosencrantz is now sentenced to be hanged. The sheriff, Judge Ward, the clerk of the court, and the prosecuting attorney joined with others in petitions to the governor on the ground that the Supreme Court judges had refused a supersedeas in consequence of the defects and informalities of the record of the proceedings in the court below. Rosencrantz was respited, and the public, who had been expecting a double execution on the 18th of June, were disappointed, although they were allowed to slake their curiosity by the sight of the condemned men and by testing the ropes in the prison enclosure where the scaffold was ready. In the paper which gave the text of Governor Pitkin's reprieve there was a heading "Done Brown. Al. Huggins, marshal of Recene, turns out a bad man. He shoots and fatally wounds officer Brown of Kokomo." Phil. Foote, constable of Kokomo, formerly marshal of Robinson, and Al. Huggins, marshal of Recene, it seems had spent the night in visiting the saloons of Kokomo, and in the early morning began to fire their pistols and guns off in the street, and continued to do so until Andy Sutton, marshal of Kokomo, attempted to arrest them, but failed, "as he was quickly covered by two rifles." Mr. Brown, a police officer, asked Huggins to put up his pistol, and, to encourage him, proceeded to pocket his own revolver, when Huggins took deliberate aim with a 38-calibre Colt and shot Brown in the left breast, just above the heart. Huggins and Foote started for Recene. The marshal of Kokomo followed quickly in pursuit, with a large body of men. Huggins refused to surrender, whereupon the marshal shot him in the face. As there was a movement to lynch him, Al. Huggins was sent under strong guard to Leadville, but Foote escaped. "Brown was not dead by last accounts, but was not expected to live long." Then came a long account of another "Denver tragedy. Charles Stickney murders Mr. T. Campan and Mrs. H. O. Devereux in a boarding-house." Stickney was nephew of ex-Governor Clifford, of Rhode Island, served as lieutenant, 20th Regiment, in the war of 1861-4, graduated at Harvard, became principal of a school, married a lady whom he sent to London to study music, and tried mining whilst his wife was giving music lessons in Denver. There she met Mr. Campan, one of the best families in Detroit; Stickney shot him and killed a woman who was in the room at the same time. "Public opinion is in favour of Stickney, and he will probably be reprimanded." The evening of the day we reached Leadville, "Alderman Johnnie M'Combe, a leading candidate for lieutenant-governor and mayor, and last spring before the people for city treasurer," shot and wounded, probably fatally, a well-known actor named James M'Donald, because the latter had taken some children in M'Combe's buggy for a drive. It is not easy to determine how far Johnnie's chance of office may be affected by this ebullition, but the newspapers did not write of it with harshness; one gave it a comic character by the heading, "Ex-Alderman M'Combe attempts to perforate Jemmy M'Donald's cranium." In my morning paper of the same date I find that "James Hogan was foully murdered by James M'Cue in the open streets of Erie this afternoon in a quarrel about a handkerchief;" that Dr. Flemings, a prominent citizen of Portland, Ashley County, Arkansas, had appeased a quarrel between a pedlar named Gillmore and a coloured man very effectually, for, "incensed by a remark made by the pedlar, the doctor drew a pistol and shot him dead;" that "a prominent business man of M'Leansboro' had made a sensation on the streets to-day by hunting up, pistol in hand, one of the gay Lotharios of Hamilton County;" that "Daniel Keller, deputy county clerk, was stabbed and killed in the street of Virginia City by Dennis Hennessy, a kerbstone broker;" that "a searching party under Captain Leper had overhauled Hamilton, Myers and Brown, the outlaws who shot Sheriff Davis and Collector Hatter at Poplar Bluff, Mo.; killed Hamilton, mortally wounded Myers, and made Brown a prisoner;" that "James Hurd shot Jeff Anderson at Alamosa, Col., and that it was feared the latter would not survive." An account of the death of "Curly Bill," a notorious desperado, leader of cowboys and murderer of Marshal White, who was killed at Caleyville, Arizona, by his comrade, Jem Wallace, followed. They had a quarrel (of course, in a saloon). After a few drinks "Curly Bill" said, "I guess I will kill you on general principles." Wallace stepped out of the saloon and immediately opened fire, inflicting a mortal wound on his foe. After a brief hearing Wallace was discharged, and left for parts unknown. Then it was related how "Thomas Clarey ('Tommy the Kid'), a Durango outlaw, was killed by a comrade named Eskridge at Annego while drunk." A fratricide and three trials for murder were duly recorded. Another paper gave an account of South-West Colorado from the lips of a recent visitor to San Juan County. "Are you going back to San Juan? No, I think not; but it is a glorious country. The men there are a little rough, and kill each other on slight provocation; but a peaceable man who does not swagger and blow is not molested. There is no law, and courts and constables are unknown." He narrates how Aleck ——, acting as a barkeeper, "a noble-hearted, jovial fellow, full of fun, who looked you square in the eye, owns mines, said to be worth a million," settled a difficulty; I am inclined to think Mr. Charles Klunk rather drew on the interviewing reporter of the Globe Democrat. He was, he said, going to see a stockman who lived about fifty miles from the house where he was visiting. A farmer said to him "Come and take a drink with me, and I'll show you the barkeeper who killed the man you are going to see an hour ago." The stockman had come into the saloon whilst Aleck was in the back room, and began to abuse him. Aleck heard him, opened on the man with a revolver, and "shot him full of holes. Next day I asked him what he was going to do about it, and he said he had been tried and acquitted, which meant that some of the leading men had told him that he had done right. There was no trial about it. When a man kills another out there in a fight they don't inquire very strictly into the circumstances, but make up their minds that they can't bring the dead man to life by hanging the killer, so nothing is done about it. But when a man murders another to rob him, the vigilants turn out and have no mercy on him. They just fill his skin with lead and tumble him into a hole like a wolf. After all, though the bears are plentiful in the spring, you can kill a deer 100 yards from the house where you like, the streams are alive with trout, the vegetables and crops splendid." Mr. Charles Klunk's resolution not to go back to this Happy Valley seems founded on sound constitutional principles. What I wish to point out is the condition in which the Central Government and State Governments have permitted many districts of New Mexico, Colorado, and California to remain. It is plain that the peculiar conditions under which the sway of the United States has been extended over the regions of the Far West have rendered it very difficult to establish the machinery for protecting life and property and punishing crime; but I do not see that the statesmen at Washington or the legislators at the State capitals are very much concerned at the reign of terror which prevails on the borders, or that they seek to impress on their people any regard for the sacredness of life. In fact, human life is almost a drug in the market. And I write fully sensible of the failures of our own and of all European Governments to repress crime, to prevent violence, and to ensure security to life and property. I am aware that Ireland and Poland are to the fore, and that wife-beating and "running kicks" illustrate the brutality of Lancashire and other districts—that London has its Alsatias, that every European capital has foul recesses in which the only laws are those of crime. All the world is busy preparing shoals of emigrants for the United States. It is only, however, when some savage outbreak affrighting the propriety of a great city arouses indignation and fear that there is a clamour for measures of repression. I do not think there is in any other part of the world, or that there ever has been in any civilised country, such shootings as have filled the land to which I allude with bloodshed. It may be said with truth that there never have been and that there are not any similar conditions in the world. But the absence of any great abiding movement for the correction and suppression of violence and lawlessness cannot be so readily accounted for or excused. There appears to be a sort of admiration for these border ruffians among portions of the American Press and public. Even a staid paper like the Republican, in an article headed "South-East Missouri: the Reign of Lawlessness about Ended," on the destruction of the New Madrid gang, writes of one who was sent to the penitentiary for thirty years "as a living monument of a bold and brave lot of desperate men who had started out to make money by robbing their fellow-men. This swift and stern justice speaks well for this portion of the States, which has had for a long time more than its full quota of these lawless characters. Myers and Brown will be hung on the 15th July, and their execution will be witnessed by thousands of South-East Missourians." The spectacle of the hanging will not do much good, if it be like the execution at Colorado Springs, which was advertised as a sort of picnic or pleasure excursion. One advertisement ran, "After the hanging to-morrow drink La Salle beer; it will cool your nerves." "Highway robbery here has about run its course, and the people are determined that lawlessness in those regions shall no longer go unwhipped of justice." Very good. But, why not sooner and long ago? "Rhodes was hung by Judge Lynch when captured at the killing of young Laforge in New Madrid;" but the gang killed the sheriff and wounded the deputy-sheriff and collector before the people arose in their majesty to squelch them. A criminal is invested with a notoriety which, next to popular estimation, is valued by some men, and it is noted with interest that "Gilbert" (one pitiless murderer) is a Catholic, and that "Rosengrants" (another homicide) "inclines towards the Episcopalians." A Leadville doctor visits one of them to ask for his body. "No, sirree, you can't have my body; I'll be hanged first!" And the public laugh at the lively sally, and admire the sangfroid of the wit! In fact, there is a tendresse for crime in this grim humour. A Texan who would "fill the skin" of a stranger "with lead" for aspersing Texas would no doubt heartily enjoy the description of the early population of the Lone Star State, which I quote from the Texas Press. "In the early days of the Republic, and even after annexation, many of the white men who came here had strong sanitary reasons for a change of climate, having been threatened with throat disease so sudden and dangerous that the slightest delay in moving to a new and milder climate would have been fatal, the subjects dying of dislocation of the spinal vertebræ at the end of a few minutes—and a rope. A great many left Arkansas, Indiana, and other States in such a hurry that they were obliged to borrow the horses on which they rode to Texas. They mostly recovered on reaching Austin, and many invalids began to feel better and consider themselves out of danger as soon as they crossed the Brancos River. Some who would not have lived twenty-four hours longer had they not left their homes reached a green old age in Western Texas, and were never again in risk of the bronchial affection already referred to by carefully avoiding the causes which led to their trouble. Some at Austin recovered so far as to be able to run for office, within a year, though defeated by a respectable majority, owing to the atmosphere and the popularity of the other candidate." The most extraordinary fact connected with the indulgence which is extended to Western excesses is the severity with which Northern and Eastern writers and publicists deal with the recklessness of Southerners with regard to life, as if it were a political question in some way connected with slavery. In an article on "Colonisation," in the July number of 'The International Review,' there is an attempt to prove that the prevalence of homicide in the South as compared with the North has impeded the flow of immigrants, although slavery has disappeared, and the writer, quoting Mr. Redfield's book on 'Homicide North and South,' says the terrible "scourge of open murder, wholly irrespective of political causes more deadly than disease or yellow fever, because each death is the result of a heinous crime, seems to be calmly accepted by public opinion as a part of the unchangeable conditions of social life in the South. In Kentucky more men are killed in six days than in eight years in Vermont. In a village of Connecticut a death from homicide has never occurred from its foundation, while in one graveyard in Owen County, Kentucky, the majority are murdered men, and in another county forty-two persons were killed and forty-three wounded in two years." But in the very same number of the 'International' there is an account of the doings of the "Vigilance Committee" of San Francisco (where there were no slaves and where there is immense wealth), which might cause the author of the paper on "Colonisation" to reflect a little on his theories. Surely in Arizona, California, &c., where the foreign population is 50 per cent. of the natives, immigration has not been checked by the prevalence of homicide? It must not be supposed that there is no "law" in the towns where these crimes have been committed; in all the cases referred to the coroner did his office and verdicts were returned, and it will have been seen that "wretches hang" in due course. We had intended to visit the State prison at Cañon City on our way to Pueblo from Leadville, where we were promised an opportunity of seeing "thirty murderers all in a row," but the delay of the train on the road deprived us of the means of verifying the statement, and I give it as it was made. It would seem as if the criminal supply were super-abundant, or that death on the gallows had no deterrent influence. The chances of escape are, if not numerous, at least considerable. At Deming, Denver, Leadville, Tucson, Tombstone, and other cities, the vast mass of the inhabitants are law-abiding, peaceable, honest, and honourable men, who feel as much horror at the violence and bloodshed around them as the most refined lady in any saloon of Boston, Paris, or London, but they appear to endure these things in the hope that the law will be enforced at last; now and then they break into vigilance committees and execute their own decrees, though the judges do not fail to lay it down that they have been accessories to murder. The great civiliser and police agent is the railroad. It is affirmed that as the iron way is pushed on the outlaws and the personnel of outlawry congregate at the terminal town, but I suspect that there is a fringe of the material left on the border as it runs. As our party were at dinner in the palace-car one evening the train pulled up at a station. There was a group of rough men on the platform, who stared in with all their eyes at the white tablecloth, set with bright glass and silver, and at the cheerful faces under the lamps. "How merry they are. I wonder if they know that this is Dodge City?" exclaimed one of the crowd. I was told by an official that when they were making a railway in these parts the surveyors, &c., were much troubled by gangs of gamblers and robbers, who impeded the work and debauched the men, so after due warning they made a razzia on the gamblers, shot a lot of them, and the rest "vamosed." There was not very long ago an actual war in the Grand Cañon Valley between the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railway and the Denver and Rio Grande Railway, in which there was an array of armed forces and fighting on both sides, and we saw with our own eyes the remains of the breastworks cast up in the Grand Cañon by the belligerents. The law came in at last. "One side got at the judge first and gave him $50,000. The other was quite ready to go beyond that, but the first was too quick, and the suit went against the company." I was talking to a lawyer about the length of time which is allowed by the judges to criminals sentenced to death as a detail of the execution of the law not in accordance with the general practice of civilised nations, when one of the company remarked, "They must do it, sir, to please the people. If we had Judas Iscariot in gaol to-morrow there would be thousands of petitions to commute his sentence, and thousands of dollars ready for an appeal to the Supreme Court. Our people don't like prompt sentence." Nevertheless, sentence and execution are pretty swift when the desperadoes take the law into their own hands, as we have seen. The revolver and the "saloon" are the agents and the scene in most of these murders, and whisky is too often the motive power. In Kansas it is a criminal offence to sell any intoxicating spirit, or to use it except on medical certificate. It is said that the law cannot last, but it surely was a very strong conviction of the evils which were endured by the community that brought a State Legislature, elected by the people, to enact that beer, wine, and spirits should be absolutely and entirely banished from its borders. Lately there was a prosecution by the State attorney of a man for selling spirits. The case was clearly proved. The judge charged the jury in the strongest manner against the defendant. The jury without retiring at once found a verdict of "not guilty." "Boys," exclaimed the judge, putting his hand on the foreman's shoulder, "Boys, I'm quite with you." The Kansas case will be, I think, watched with great interest by the rival parties in England, and it is certainly worth investigation and attention, for, if all I hear be true here, a Parliament elected by the people either in advance or in the rear of their constituents have passed a law which judges condemn, and juries evade, and public opinion derides.

From a British, which may be an unintelligent, point of view, there is a want of logical method in the treatment of the Great Rebellion question by Americans. There is a general disposition to speak of the war between the Federal Government and the people of the Confederate States as an historical fact which has ceased to present burning controversies and terrible issues to the Republic. But, at the same time, these controversies are kept alive, and, for the defeated, are stirred up incessantly by anniversaries and celebrations, natural but, if it be the object of Americans, as many of them assure us it is, to let the memory of the past die out like that of a horrid dream, impolitic. The spirit which animated the Southern States is neither dead nor sleeping. But there are no end of G. A. P. and G. A. R. Associations flourishing their banners and waving their sheathed swords in and out of the newspapers, and it is almost more than Southern flesh and blood can bear at times to be reminded of the defeats they sustained, even if they be content to admit that the doctrine of the sovereignty of States was a delusion, and that the indivisibility of the Republic was a fundamental principle of the Constitution before it was conclusively established by force of arms.

North and South, our good cousins are fond of anniversaries and speechmakings. I wonder where they get their taste for them from? Some few veterans dine together on anniversaries of old French war days, and there is a Balaclava Dinner in the Old Country; but, though we have a reasonably long list of fighting successes to commemorate, their anniversaries are mostly left to the almanacks. The other day the Americans had a celebration of the Battle of Cowpens, wherein the heroic Morgan gave the diabolical Tarleton the deuce of a whipping. I wonder if it was worth remembering? But it is better to remember such things perhaps than Sherman's Raid or Wilderness—or Chickahominy. There are bitternesses enough remaining—the rivalries and jealousies of generals are still active and these memories might be left to die out.