San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 | Page 3

their
keen scent hag directed them; all were astir and with but little effort
obtained all that they desired. The offices were thus filled by rapacious
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