| 513 would pacify the people of Bourbon.-Many of the citizens of that county, therefore, deliberately resolved upon the summary execution. They first deputed ten citizens of the county to visit Williamstown, and inform the citizens of that place, and the prisoners particularly, that at such a time the prisoners were to be executed. This notice was thirty six hours previous to the actual execution, and a clergyman was also sent, and actually went to the prison for religious converse with the prisoners.
On Saturday last in pursuance of the notice, about five hundred citizens of Bourbon, to which were added some from Scott and Harrison counties, came into Williamstown in solemn procession and most perfect order. They had chosen their Sheriffs to act for the occasion, and proceeded to the jail, and demanded Maythe and Couch. The Sheriff of Grant refused to give them up, or the keys of the prison; he offered, however, no other resistance, and the people at once broke open the doors. They then took the prisoners, placed them in an open wagon, their irons on them took up the line of march without the least noise or confusion, to the spot of ground where the murder was committed about four miles distant. By this time the number assembled was believed to have been at least two thousand. After arriving on the ground, Mr. O'Hara, a member of the bar, addressed the people for some time upon the propriety of permitting the law to take its course. He was listened to with the utmost silence and respect, but without apparently altering the determination of a single person present. The preliminaries were then adjusted and the prisoners were asked if they had any thing to say previous to the closing of their earthly accounts. One of them, Maythe, addressed a few remarks to the people, admitted the commission of the act for which they were to suffer, denying however, that it was his wish to commit actual murder. Religious service was then performed by a clergyman present, and Maythe and Couch were hung in their irons upon a tree standing over the same spot where their crime was committed. Rude coffins were constructed, and there they we buried.
However deserving the culprits may have been of the fate which they have suffered, yet every reflecting mind must at once stand appalled at such unwarrantable and unconstitutional proceedings.-If the laws are defective, why not the people rise up en masse and have such amendments, and alterations as will better secure the end proposed, instead of carelessly looking on until the evil arises to such a height as threatens to overwhelm the social order, and thieves and marauders practice their iniquitous and bloody designs without fear? Let the people do their duty and nip the evil in the bud, and there will be no cause for those outbreaks and flagrant violations of the constitution. We have had too much mobbing and lynching for the honor of the United States, and such proceedings are not calculated to raise her in the estimation of her best citizens or of enlightened foreigners.
If the main pillar of the constitution, viz: the Judiciary is tottering, and the citizens after delegating that power into such hands as they choose, and then again take it into their own at pleasure, and use it as their excited passions may dictate-then farewell to order and virtue, the foundation of the social compact is at once destroyed, and the glorious constitution of America-the boast of freemen and the admiration of the world will fall, and in its ruins crush its best and noblest friends.
Anti-Mormon Almanac.
We have seen a notice in one of our exchange papers of an almanac bearing the above title, published in the city of New York, for the year A. D. 1842.-It seems that Satan and his emmisaries [emissaries] are determined to bring the saints into notice, and raise an excitement among the people. Although we deprecate the spirit which actuates those who engage in such plans to put down the truth, yet we are assured that in the providence of God they will ultimately tend to the glory of God-the spread of truth and the good of the church. Although the world be flooded with lies and evil reports; let the servant of God go forth, "with the pure testimony put forth by the spirit," and they will brush away the cob webs of superstition,
(page 513) |
