Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/307

 roasting, 'he shall not be shot. I would sooner slacken the fire, if it would increase his misery;' and the man who said this was, as we understand, an officer of justice!"

Lest this demonstration of "public opinion" should be regarded as a sudden impulse merely, not an index of the settled tone of feeling in that community, it is important to add, that the Hon. Luke E. Lawless, Judge of the Circuit Court of Missouri, at a session of that court in the city of St. Louis, some months after the burning of this man, decided officially that since the burning of McIntosh was the act, either directly or by countenance of a majority of the citizens, it is "a case which transcends the jurisdiction" of the Grand Jury! Thus the State of Missouri proclaimed to the world that the wretches who perpetrated that unspeakably diabolical murder, and the thousands that stood by consenting to it, were her representatives, and the Bench sanctified it with the solemnity of a judicial decision.