The Murrell clan first, then the Wages and Copeland next. Both organizations came to a tragic end. Astounding as the fact may be, there are some who prefer a life of blood and plunder and terror, to peaceful industry and the blessings of orderly society. If the life and history now under consideration should fall into the hands of some of this class, let them not indulge in the flattering unction that but for this or the other error committed, the career of the clan might have continued indefinitely. Let no such fatal delusions be cherished for a moment. Under a system of semi-civilization, where laws are only a mock farce, where amount of money is the measure of guilt or innocence; where judges on the bench, executive officials, rings, cliques, lawyers, demagogues, and even a number of the clerical order—Mr. McGrath as an instance—all operate, not according to the principles of right in consonance with the benign influences which tend towards a rule of natural order and justice, but in conformity with corrupt and sordid motives for political considerations to secure wealth and power, no matter how foul the means; under such an unhealthy condition of circumstances, organizations like the Murrell, the Wages and Copeland, however assiduously and indirectly supported by men of wealth and distinction, however bold and able the actors, cannot permanently continue. Such combinations of lawlessness for murder and plunder, incendiarism and all the other darker crimes which belong to depraved natures, must terminate in death and dissolution; but it so generally happens that the less guilty end their career on the scaffold or in some other way by the hands of an outraged community; while the higher grades of participant criminals, of larger calibre of brain, are left to revel on the spoils for which the less fortunate have had to suffer the pains of an ignominious death. Organizations of such vast and gigantic magnitude, are incidents of a rude and transition state of society, where population is sparse, where means of protection are sadly at fault, and where so many hardened criminals make their escape through the mock forms of trials in courts, not of justice, but of ignorance and corruption under the name of liberty and a scrupulous tenderness in behalf of a spurious or false sentimental color of humanity; but in proportion as population increases, so also must detection and protection, with a better administration of law and justice increase in the same ratio, even if the forms of government have to be changed for the accomplishment of the same. Wealth cannot accumulate long without chaos and anarchy, unless protection of life and property be commensurate. But often the closing era of such terrible organizations for bold and daring depredations on the better portions of society, then begin other organizations of less dimensions, but more dangerous, because more subtle and refined, and in every way harder of detection.