These men had, undoubtedly, the right to claim such a protection. Any other country to which they might have belonged, would have given it to them. It has, however, been consistently refused, or accorded them in a way which renders it worse than useless. They have, consequently, been compelled to rely upon themselves for protection, it being carried out after their own fashion. Necessarily, this fashion has varied. But, in no case, could it take a shape other than of the struggle ever-existent between the conflicting parties, when law has become paralyzed, or neglects to put in a satisfactory appearance. For many years, legal restraint had been overridden in San Francisco. At length, the condition of society resulting from this became unbearable. It was then that the citizens of the capital of the young and vigorous West took the matter into their own hands, independently of the State authorities. A vigilance committee sprung from their actual necessity, and, in a short space of time, daily crime was reduced to the ordinary ratio it bears in civilization. Even in the great Eastern metropolis, during the past two or three years, a similar necessity has been proclaimed, and a like exertion of the popular will has been predicted by some of the leading New York journals. There, however, law seems recently to have awakened from its long slumber, and, if consistently active and severe, will repress the lawlessness of passion or criminality. But where there is no law, save on sparsely rare occasions, as is sufficiently evidenced on the mountains, and in the valleys and plains bordering on California, the action of vigilance committees, or some restraint as sharp and certain, is a paramount necessity. How can it be wondered at, while crime of the nature of the last-mentioned, and others which I have recounted, are of well-nigh yearly occurrence, that it should have exerted, on the part of those exposed to its visitation--without the interference of national protection except at rare intervals--the determination to repress it, bloodily and mercilessly, as the instances in which it develops its own atrocity and pitilessness, too evidently require? However, let me avoid the appearance of defending what I believe to be the righteous exertion of a spirit of self-protection, and leave it to the unbiassed judgment of my readers.