and the threats of violence; otherwise the decisions of our courts must conform to the violence threatened, and there will be an end of our judicial system, the third and most valuable factor in the scheme of representative government.  Society cannot, therefore, punish, but must applaud the man who defends the courts of the people and the judges of those courts from such violence and threats of violence.  For it must be apparent to even the dullest intellect that all such violence is an outrage upon the judicial conscience, and therefore involves and puts in peril the liberties of the people.

The New Orleans Times-Democrat, in one of its issues at this period, used the following language: 

The judge in America who keeps his official ermine spotless, who faithfully attends to the heavy and responsible duties of his station, deserves that the people should guard the sanctity of his person with a strength stronger than armor of steel and readier than the stroke of lance or sword.  Though the judges be called to pass on tens of thousands of cases, to sentence to imprisonment or to death thousands of criminals, they should be held by the people safe from the hate and vengeance of those criminals as if they were guarded by an invulnerable shield.

If Judge Field, of the Supreme Court, one of the nine highest judges under our republican government, in travelling recently over his circuit in California, had been left to the mercy of the violent man who had repeatedly threatened his life, who had proved himself ready with the deadly knife or revolver, it would have been a disgrace to American civilization; it would have been a stigma and stain upon American manhood; it would have shown that the spirit of American liberty, which exalts and pays reverence to our judiciary, had been replaced by a public apathy that marked the beginning of the decline of patriotism.

Judge Field recognized this when, in being advised to arm himself in case his life was endangered, he uttered the noble words:  “No, sir; I do not and will not carry arms, for when it is known that the judges of the court are compelled to arm themselves against assaults offered in consequence of their judicial action it will be time to dissolve the courts, consider the government a failure, and let society lapse into barbarism.”  That ringing sentence has gone to the remotest corner of the land, and everywhere it has gone it should fire the American heart with a proud resolve to protect forever the sanctity of our judiciary.

Had not Neagle protected the person of Judge Field from the assault of a dangerous and violent ruffian, apparently intent on murder, by his prompt and decisive action, shooting the assailant down to his death, it is certain that other brave men would have rushed quickly to his rescue; but Neagle’s marvelous quickness forestalled the need of any other’s action.  The