San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 | Page 3

and unscrupulous men. The agents who had helped to elect them, or impose them upon the people by fraud, were supported and protected in their villainies; and in the consciousness of impunity for crime, walked the streets heavily armed and ready on the instant to exact a bloody revenge for an interference with their infamous schemes, or an attempt to bring them to merited punishment.
In San Francisco the effects of all this were visible at an early period in the prevalence of crime and outrage; in the laxity with which offenders were prosecuted; in the squandering of public property; the increasing burden of taxation; and the insecurity of life and property. Now and then when the evils of the system weighed with the most depressing effect upon the business part of the community, some spasmodic effort for a time produced a change. But a temporary check only was applied. The snake was scotched, not killed. The ballot box upon whose sanctity, in a Republican government must the liberties of the people depend, was in the hands of the pliant tools of designing politicians, or of desperate knaves ready to bargain and sell the result of the election to the party or individuals who would pay the largest sum for it. By such infamous arts had many officials of law and justice been placed in situations of trust and power. Could it reasonably be expected that they would honestly and fairly apply the law to the punishment of the friends who had given them their offices, when they added to these crimes against society, the scarcely more flagrant ones of robbery and murder? If it was possible, the people did not believe it would be done. They saw enough to convince them that it was not done. They saw an unarmed man shot down and instantly killed in one of the most frequented streets of the city while endeavoring to escape from his pursuer. They saw the forms of trial applied in this clear case, and after every quibble and perversion of law which ingenuity could devise had been tried, the lame and impotent conclusion arrived at of a verdict of manslaughter, and a sentence for a short period to the State Prison. They saw a gambler, while quietly conversing with the United States Marshal in the doorway of a store on Clay Street, draw a revolver from his pocket and slay him upon the spot. They heard that gamblers and other notorious characters, his associates and friends, had raised large sums; that able lawyers had been retained for his defense; and then that his trial had ended in a disagreement of the Jury, soon to be followed, as they believed, by a nolle prosequi, and the discharge of the red handed murderer. They saw an Editor, for commenting on a homicide in the interior of the State, committed by a man claiming to be respectable, and followed by his acquittal in the face of what appeared to be the clearest evidence of his guilt; assaulted by the criminal in a public street in San Francisco, knocked down from behind by a blow on the head from a loaded cane, and beaten into insensibility, and, as seemed, to death; while three of the assailant's friends stood by, with cocked revolvers, threatening to slay anyone who should interfere. Again they saw the farce of trial resulting, as every one knew it would, in acquittal. At length, so confirmed and strengthened were villains by the certainty of escape from punishment, that they did not even trouble themselves to become assured of the identity of their victims. A worthy citizen in going home through Merchant Street between eight and nine o'clock in the evening was approached from behind by a person who, pressing his arm over his shoulder thrust a knife into his breast. Luckily the knife encountered in its passage a thick pocket memorandum book which it cut through, and but for which, he would have lost his life. The intended assassin undoubtedly mistook him for another person whom he somewhat resembled. A few days after a gentleman passing by the Oriental Hotel heard the report of a pistol, and was sensible of the passage of a ball through his hat in most uncomfortable proximity to his head. A person immediately stepped up to him saying, "Excuse me, I thought it was another man."
The ally of the people in times of difficulty and danger, the Press, seemed subservient from choice to this vile domination, or overawed and controlled by it. Experience had proved that its conductors could be true, bold, effective only at the peril of their lives. More than one had suffered in his person the penalty of his allegiance to truth and duty; until at length intimidated and desponding, they had