Page:Georges Sorel, Reflections On Violence (1915).djvu/221

Rh an energetic Vigilance Committee could get hold of him. The American who happens to be honest has one excellent habit—he does not allow himself to be crushed on the pretext that he is virtuous. A law-abiding man is not necessarily a craven, as is often the case with us; on the contrary, he is convinced that his interests ought to be considered before those of an habitual criminal or of a gambler. Moreover, he possesses the necessary energy to resist, and the kind of life which he leads makes him capable of resisting effectively, even of taking the initiative and the responsibility of a serious step when circumstances demand it. … Such a man, placed in a new country, full of natural resources, wishing to take advantage of the riches it contains and to acquire a superior situation in life by his labour, will not hesitate to suppress, in the name of the higher interests he represents, the bandits who compromise the future of this country. That is why, twenty-five years ago at Denver, so many corpses were dangling above the little wooden bridge thrown across Cherry Creek."

This is a considered opinion of P. de Rousiers, for he returns elsewhere to this question. "I know," he says, "that lynch law is generally considered in France as a symptom of barbarism …; but if honest virtuous people in Europe think thus, virtuous people in America think quite otherwise." He highly approved of the Vigilance Committee of New Orleans which, in 1890, "to the great satisfaction of all virtuous people," hanged maffiosi acquitted by the jury.

In Corsica, at the time when the vendetta was the regular means of supplying the deficiencies or correcting the action of a too halting justice, the people do not appear to have