Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/609

 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 601 collection for the purpose of writing his own history of the Pacific coast. This was done in some thirty-nine volumes. His library was purchased by the regents of the university of California and conveyed to Berkeley in 1906. The present age, Mr. Stephens notes, is more wishful to form its own opinion of the evidence than to accept that of the collector of the documents, and very naturally. California exhibits a phase of frontier life under unexampled conditions, and perhaps as characteristic a set of documents as any are the records of the committee of vigilance of San Francisco of 1851. Issues, too, are involved which are still living and difficult. The position briefly was this. The country was to be conquered in War by the states, or to be ceded under treaty by Mexico. In the one case certain rules applied, in the other quite another set of rules. Two civiliza- tions were represented the Mexican republican variant of the Spanish, and the frontier type of the American. There were American military commandants, regular and a shade irregular, and American naval men. There was old Spanish law as used by Mexico to be administered after the declaration of peace, and very typical Americans were elected as alcaldes to administer it. There was the general American idea of what law and government ought to be. Enough opportunity for clashing was provided already, when gold was discovered, and a diluvies of the un- desirables of many nations swamped everything : Chilenos and Sidney convicts (ticket-of-leave men and others, men and women), Irish and Asiatics ; and the eastern and southern states contributed their quota. Spanish land grants and the more obvious rules of the Decalogue were swept aside. At last the reputable elements of the community could no longer endure the combination of unchecked ruffianism and interim or paralytic and corrupt government. The state was organized in self- defence, but even so the municipal authorities were unequal to their task. Then was formed the committee of vigilance of San Francisco in 1851, which was copied in a number of other towns. Legend and history have both been busy with its story ; and bound up with men's judgements upon it are prejudices and preconceptions and other factors of great significance, the American perhaps one should say the Jeffersonian faith in the sense and sufficiency of the average citizen, and the negro question as lynch law bears upon it. Both of these last are apt to modify men's opinions of the popular court, organized or improvised indepen- dently of the regular government. Hence the importance to Californians, to Americans generally, and to others, of this careful reprint of the original records of the committee. It comprises masses of notes taken at various trials, ill spelt at times and constantly unpunctuated, quite authentic notes which show how carefully persons accused were tried and how thoroughly evidence was sifted. Other passages of the records deal with the members of the committee and its finances, the latter a very difficult problem. It had no prison or other means of housing or feeding its prisoners, and they had to be housed and fed ; they had also to be arrested, and this implied travel and search, both costly. Altogether the volume is a great bundle of the raw material of life under very interesting conditions.