of their constables, but he managed to escape at night, and took refuge on the John Adams.  In August, they hanged Hetherington and Brace in broad daylight, without any jury-trial; and, soon after, they quietly disbanded.  As they controlled the press, they wrote their own history, and the world generally gives them the credit of having purged San Francisco of rowdies and roughs; but their success has given great stimulus to a dangerous principle, that would at any time justify the mob in seizing all the power of government; and who is to say that the Vigilance Committee may not be composed of the worst, instead of the best, elements of a community?  Indeed, in San Francisco, as soon as it was demonstrated that the real power had passed from the City Hall to the committee room, the same set of bailiffs, constables, and rowdies that had infested the City Hall were found in the employment of the “Vigilantes;” and, after three months experience, the better class of people became tired of the midnight sessions and left the business and power of the committee in the hands of a court, of which a Sydney man was reported to be the head or chief-justice.

During the winter of 1855-’56, and indeed throughout the year 1856, all kinds of business became unsettled in California.  The mines continued to yield about fifty millions of gold a year; but little attention was paid to agriculture or to any business other than that of “mining,” and, as the placer-gold was becoming worked out, the miners were restless and uneasy, and were shifting about from place to place, impelled by rumors put afloat for speculative purposes.  A great many extensive enterprises by joint-stock companies had been begun, in the way of water-ditches, to bring water from the head of the mountain-streams down to the richer alluvial deposits, and nearly all of these companies became embarrassed or bankrupt.  Foreign capital, also, which had been attracted to California by reason of the high rates of interest, was being withdrawn, or was tied up in property which could not be sold; and, although our bank’s having withstood the panic gave us great credit, still the community itself was shaken, and loans of money were risky in the extreme.  A great many merchants, of the highest name, availed themselves of the extremely liberal bankrupt law to get discharged of their old debts, without sacrificing much, if any, of their stocks of goods on hand, except a lawyer’s fee; thus realizing Martin Burke’s saying that “many a clever fellow had been ruined by paying his debts.”  The merchants and business-men of San Francisco did not intend to be ruined by such a course.  I raised the rate of exchange from three to three and a half, while others kept on at the old rate; and I labored hard to collect old debts, and strove, in making new loans, to be on the safe side.  The State and city both denied much of their public debt; in fact, repudiated it; and real estate, which the year before had been first-class security, became utterly unsalable.