The power of the Committee continues in active and constant exercise for nearly three months, when the purification of the city from crime and from criminals being accomplished, the authority of the laws is restored, also the use of the ballot-box which had been desecrated; this restoration is by the order and in pursuance of the authority and power of the Committee which are voluntarily laid down with the approbation and consent of a community consisting of from 25,000 to 30,000 persons. There is no good reason for saying that during the whole of that period and in the midst of such stirring scenes the power of the Committee was in a single instance exercised to divest any innocent man of his property, or to oppress him in any way, or to interfere with his legal rights further than to compel submission to the temporary supremacy of that body, or to punish the innocent, or to enable the guilty to escape, or to aggrandize the Committee, or to benefit its members, their friends, or its _employées_, or to do an act of intentional injustice to any human being. During the government of the Committee the business concerns of the city and the vocations of its citizens were carried on with at least as much regularity and success as ever. Since its resignation and the consequent dispersion of its power not a banished man has returned contrary to the terms of his expulsion, and no member of the Committee, nor any one who acted by and within its authority, has been called to account for his acts within the bounds either of the city or of the State to which it belongs. Is it probable that there is any city in Europe of equal size in which its legally established authorities could have been suspended by the irregular action of its own people with similar results,--in which the substituted power could be exercised with equal wisdom and forbearance, and laid down with so few causes for individual complaint? My opportunities for observation, although considerable, have been less than those of some others, and I may be wrong in thinking as I do that such things could not be done by any other people in the world. The remedy for the social and political crimes which called the Committee of Vigilance into existence was a fearful one, and must be so regarded by all thinking and virtuous minds, and it would seem paradoxical to set up such a crowning act of disorder--that of the subversion of all legal authority, for even the shortest period--as an exhibition of a love of order and respect for the rights of persons and of property on the part of the actors; but I cannot resist the belief that the transaction afforded the strongest proof of the existence of those great principles in their minds, and that a proper sense of them and a determination to maintain them will seldom be wanting on the part of those who can act as did the Committee of San Francisco and its supporters.