Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/593



mans ranch reaped or stacked by the Chinaman is liable to tak fire from the Heat of the sack or the spark from the smoke sack. It looks bad to do such work but if our state oficers done do somethino: in pertection of the poore we will half to carry it out ourselves and it will be in a ruif manner to from

T. O. MUGINS.

"To the Public."

The instruments of the Chico outrages were less fanatics than fools. Individually they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by becoming the blind tools of those who had nothing to lose and everything to gain by warring on a non-voting class. The antagonism of the stableman and the butcher's clerk to Chinese laborers was inspired neither by race antipathy, fanatical hatred, nor industrial interest. Vulgar brutality seems to have been the primary instinct prompting them, and next to this petty plunder. Believing themselves safe from punishment by reason of their secret associations, flattered by those who set them on, they flung forward the bridle rein of their evil natures, and let their low tastes lead them whither they would. Secret societies organized for the accomplishment of a pretended public good, and then lending themselves to the commission of crime, cannot be too severely denounced by every lover of honest law and open liberty.