and sunny as our skies. Like the homes of New England, yea, better and brighter far, shall be the homes to be builded in the wonderland by the sunset sea. The homes of a race, from which shall spring the flower of men, to serve as models for the mighty world, and be the fair beginning of a better time.

CHAPTER VIII.

VIGILANCE COMMITTEE CRITICISED.

By the Late James O'Meara, Pioneer Journalist.

THERE WAS NO CALL FOR THE COMMITTEE, BECAUSE JUSTICE WAS OBTAINABLE IN THE COURTS-CORA MUCH SINNED AGAINST-HOW THE COMMITTEE SHIELDED MurderERS-OTHER STRICTURES.

[The late James O'Meara was a defender of the Law and Order party, which opposed the Vigilance Committee. The editor obtained the manuscript from a friend of the late James O'Meara, and quotations from it are frequent in this chapter.-EDITOR.]

There have been two opinions of the work of the Vigilance Committee of 1856 ever since the days of its activity. Though Mr. Charles James King has presented the popular side quite fully it should be said, in justice to the memory of Cora, that one jury composed partly of high, reputable merchants, failed to find him guilty, and a second trial was hanging over his head at the time he was tried and convicted by the Vigilance Committee.

Mr. George K. Fitch, the venerable retired journalist, who was for many years editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, said to the author of this work in January, 1904: "The killing of United States Marshal Richardson was never clearly accounted for as to details. Of course Cora killed him, but whether the men had quarreled has always been unaccounted for and was a mystery during the trial."

Mr. William M. Hinton, one of the venerable publishers of San Francisco, formerly a supervisor, and the man who brought out Henry George's "Progress and Poverty," said to the present writer in December, 1903: "The facts concerning Cora's conviction by the Vigilance Committee have never been published. The late Auditor Thomas Smiley, of San Francisco, defended Cora before the Vigilance Committee, of which he was a member, and Smiley told me there was a tie vote as to the accused man's guilt. A member of the committee said, 'Suppose we settle it by the tossing of a half dollar,' and Smiley is my authority for the statement that the committee

flopped a half dollar. The throw went against the accused, and Cora was hanged on the chance verdict of the coin."

George K. Fitch said he could not credit the story, because, "the Vigilance Committee was a body of very calm and temperate men of great deliberation and a high sense of justice. For ten successive years after their work the People's Party won every election, the Democratic and Republican parties were side-tracked, and San Francisco was purified."

Coming to Mr. O'Meara's criticism, and preliminary to direct quotations from his manuscript, it should be said that he held that all publishel accounts of the committee's work were by members or friends of that organization. As for himself, he was neither a member of the committee nor of their opponents, the Law and Order Society, of which William T. Sherman (afterward the famous general) was the president. However, he indorsed and favored the work of the latter society. Here are Mr. O'Meara's criticisms in his own words:

"First, as to the cause or pretense for the organization of the Vigilance Committee: It is declared by its ex-members and supporters, or apologists, that it was necessary for the reason that the law was not duly administered; that the courts, the fountains of justice, were either corrupted or neglectful of their duties; that juries were packed with unworthy men in important criminal cases, that there were gross frauds in elections, by which the will of the people was defied and defeated, and improper and dishonest men, some of them notorious rogues, were counted in and installed in public office; and that there was a class of turbulent offenders who had the countenance, if not the support, of judges and officials in high places, and who, therefore, felt themselves to be above or exempt from the law.

"Tennyson has well remarked that there is no lie so baneful as one which is half truth. So it is in respect to these alleged reasons for the organization of that Vigilance Committee. It is not true that the courts were corrupt, neglectful or remiss. Judge Hager presided in the Fourth District Court, and his integrity and judicial qualifications, or judgments, have never been questioned or impeached. Judge Freelon presided as county judge; the same can be remarked of him. There was no material fault alleged against the Police Court. It is true, however, that in important criminal cases, and sometimes in civil suits, the juries were often packed. But why?

I will state: Merchants and business men generally had great aversion to serve on juries, particularly in important criminal cases, which are usually protracted; and the jury were kept in comparative close condition, because their time was too valuable, and their business interests required their constant attention. They preferred, therefore, to pay the fine imposed, in case they were unable to prevail upon the judge to excuse them. Jury fees were inconsiderable in comparison with their daily profits; but it was the loss of time from their business which mainly actuated them.

"Yet these fees were sufficient to pay a day's board and lodging, and to the many who were out of employment, serving on a jury was the means to both. There is, in every large community, the class known as professional jurymen-hangers about the court, eagerly waiting to be called. There were men of this kind then; there are more than enough of them still loitering about the courts, civil and criminal. San Francisco is not the only city in the United States in which defendants in grave criminal cases have recourse to every conceivable and possible means, without scruple, to procure their own acquittal, or the utmost modification of the penalty, by proving extenuating circumstances, or that the indictment magnifies the crimes. This was true of 1856, here, as elsewhere in the land; it is equally true now. Had the merchants and solid citizens then drawn as jurors, fulfilled their duty to the cause of justice, to the conservation and maintenance of law and order, they would have had no cause or pretense for the organization which they formed. The initial fault was attributable to themselves; the jury-packing they complained of was the direct consequence of their own neglect of that essential duty to the state, in the preservation of law and order; and they cannot reasonably or justly shift the onus from themselves upon the courts.

"Concerning the frauds in election: yes, there were frauds, outrageous frauds, at every election: repeaters, bullies, ballot-box stuffing, and false counts of the ballots to count out this candidate and count in the one favored of the 'boys.' More than one member of the Vigilance Executive Committee had thorough knowledge of all this, for the very conclusive reason that more than one of them had engaged in these frauds, had not only participated in them directly and indirectly, but had actually proposed them; employed the persons who had committed the frauds, and paid these tools round sums for the infamous service. The reward of these employers and

accessories before, during and after the frauds, was the office that was coveted; and the 'Hon.' prefixed to their names was as the gilt which the watch-stuffer applies to the brass thing he imposes upon the greenhorn as a solid gold watch. Out of the committee, of the Executive Committee, the detectives of that body might have unearthed these honorable and virtuous purifiers and reformers; with them, perhaps others whose frauds were no less wicked and criminal; but in business transactions, and not in political affairs.

"One of the Executive Committee had served his term of two years in the Ohio state prison for forgery; here in San Francisco he had, during two city elections, been the trusted agent and disburser of a very heavy sack in the honest endeavor to secure the nomination, and promote the election, of his principal to high office; yet this pure man was honored by his associates of the committee, and became singularly active in pressing the expatriation of some of the very 'ruffians and ballot-box stuffers' he had patronized and paid. He had learned that 'dead men told no tales.' This pure character did not stand alone in his experience of penal servitude, as birds of a feather, and he was under no necessity of exemplifying Lord Dundreary's bird, to go into a corner and flock by himself. That some turbulent offenders, and largely too many of them, defied the law, is likewise true. But that they were countenanced or favored by the judges, is utterly without truthful foundation. And it is remarkable that, of all the men hanged or expatriated by the committee, only two had ever been complained of or arraigned before the courts for any crime of violence; not one of them all had been here accused or suspected of theft or robbery, or other felony. This is more, as I have just above stated, than can be said of some of the forty-one members of the Executive Committee. And among the members of the rank and file of the five thousand or six thousand enrolled upon the lists of the Committee-of natives and English-speaking citizens or residents-there were scores of scoundrels of every degree, bogus golddust operators, swindlers and fugitives from justice. Of the members of other nationalities-some of whom had not been in the country long enough to acquire English—I have no occasion to pass remark; but the fear of communism and disturbance, from the increase of its incendiary votaries in our country, east and here, cannot be lessened or composed by the recol