him as one of our best lawyers.  But when he comes forth as the supporter of such a fellow as Fife, under the plea that the laws have been violated—­when he arraigns the acts of thirty of the inhabitants of this place, it is high time for him to reflect seriously on the consequences.  The Penitentiary system is the result of the refinement of the eighteenth century.  As man advances in the sciences, in the arts, in the intercourse of social and civilized life, in the same proportion does crime and vice keep an equal pace, and always makes demands on the wisdom of legislators.  Now, what is the Lynch law but the Penitentiary system carried out to its full extent, with a little more steam power? or more properly, it is simply thus:  There are some scoundrels in society on whom the laws take no effect; the most expeditious and short way is to let a majority decide and give them JUSTICE.”

Let the reader notice, 1st, that this outrage was perpetrated with great deliberation, and after it was over, the victim was commanded to leave town by the next week:  when that cooling interval had passed, the outrage was again deliberately repeated. 2d.  It was perpetrated by “thirty persons,’ “the most respectable in the city.” 3d.  That at the second lynching of Fife, several of his neighbors who had gathered to defend him, (seeing that all the legal officers in the city had refused to do it, thus violating their oaths of office,) were knocked down, to which the editor adds, with the business air of a professional butcher, “nothing serious occurred!” 4th.  That not a single magistrate in the city took the least notice either of the barbarities inflicted upon Fife, or of the assaults upon his friends, knocking them down, &c., but, as the editor informs us, all “seemed to acquiesce in the proceedings.” 5th.  That this conduct of the magistrates was well pleasing to the great mass of the citizens, is plain, from the remark of the editor that “every one supposed that the whole subject was ended,” and from his wondering exclamation, “WHAT WAS OUR ASTONISHMENT to hear that Mr. C.R.  Kinney had actually took upon him to examine witnesses,” &c., and also from the editor’s declaration, “Such an excitement we never before witnessed in our town.”  Excitement at what?  Not because the laws had been most impiously trampled down at noon-day by a conspiracy of thirty persons, “the most respectable in the city;” not because a citizen had been twice seized and publicly tortured for hours, without trial, and in utter defiance of all authority; nay, verily! this was all complacently acquiesced in; but because in this slaveholding Sodom there was found a solitary Lot who dared to uplift his voice for law and the right of trial by jury; this crime stirred up such an uproar in that city of “most respectable” lynchers as was “never witnessed before,” and the noble lawyer who thus put every thing at stake in invoking the majesty of law, would, it seems, have