mother country and of the United States, amnesty for their conscientious scruples. There may be a state of society in which it becomes *the duty of good citizens to assume an illegal attitude, and to perform illegal acts, in the interest of law and order*. If those who are legally intrusted with executive and judicial offices are openly, notoriously, and persistently false to their trusts, to such a degree as to derange and subvert the social order which it is their function to maintain, good citizens, if they have the power, have undoubtedly the right to displace them, and to institute a provisional government for the temporary emergency. A case of this kind occurred a few years ago in San Francisco. The entire government of the city had for a series of years been under the control of ruffians and miscreants, and force and fraud had rendered the ballot-box an ineffectual remedy. No law-abiding citizen deemed his life or property safe; gross outrages were committed with impunity; and thieves and murderers alone had the protection of the municipal authorities. Despairing of legal remedy, the best citizens of all parties organized themselves under the direction of a Committee of Safety, forcibly deposed the municipal magistrates and judges, brought well-known criminals to trial, conviction, and punishment, reëstablished the integrity of suffrage, and resigned their power to functionaries lawfully elected, under whom and their successors the city has enjoyed a degree of order, tranquillity, and safety at least equal to that of any other great city on the continent.