Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/259

Rh istered by legal methods tells of a higher condition of society than the wild outcries and hasty judgment of mobs. Take the case of the assassin of our late much- loved President; how much more it speaks for our civilization that in an orderly way, before a legal tri- bunal, the assassin was tried, having the benefit of counsel, and thereafter put to death in accordance with the dictates of law, than if an angry mob had torn him from the officers of the law and tortured him to death. To Stay Epidemic of Crime " What can be done to stay this epidemic of lynch- ing? One thing is the establishment of a greater con- fidence in the summary and certain punishment of the criminal. Men are afraid of the law's delays and the uncertainty of its results. Not that they doubt the in- tegrity of the judges, but they know that the law abounds with technical rules, and that appellate courts will often reverse a judgment of conviction for a dis- regard of such rules, notwithstanding a full belief in the guilt of the accused. If all were certain that the guilty ones would be promptly tried and punished, the inducement to lynch would be largely taken away. In an address which I delivered before the American Bar Association at Detroit some years since, I advocated doing away with appeals in criminal cases. It did not meet the favor of the association, but I still believe in its wisdom. For nearly a hundred years there was no appeal from the judgment of conviction of criminal cases in our federal courts, and no review, except in a few cases in which, two judges sitting, a difference of opinion on a question of law was certified to the Su- preme Court. In England the rule has been that there was no appeal in criminal cases, although a question of doubt might be reserved by the presiding judge for the consideration of his brethren. The Hon. E. J. Phelps, who was Minister to England during Mr. Cleveland's first administration, once told me that while he was there only two cases were so reserved.