In the determination of origins it is frequently impossible to obtain direct evidence bearing on the point in question. In this case there is direct evidence for connecting the name of Charles Lynch with the origin of “lynch-law.”[49] In 1817 Judge Spencer Roane wrote in a letter to William Wirt: “In the year 1792 there were many suits on the south side of James River, for inflicting Lynch’s law.” Mr. Wirt adds, in a note explanatory of the words “Lynch’s law,” “Thirty-nine lashes, inflicted without trial or law, on mere suspicion of guilt, which could not be regularly proven. This lawless practice, which, sometimes by the order of a magistrate, sometimes without, prevailed extensively in the upper counties on James River, took its name from the gentleman who set the first example of it.”[50] Though Wirt does not mention Charles Lynch by name, he does say that the lawless practice “prevailed extensively in the upper counties on James River,” and Charles Lynch was for years closely identified with the interests of Campbell[51] and Bedford counties—two of the upper counties on the James River. Henry Howe, in his “Historical Collections of Virginia,” in a section entitled “Lynch Law,” says: “At that time (the time of the Revolution), this country (Campbell County and vicinity) was very thinly settled, and infested by a lawless band of tories and desperadoes. The necessity of the case involved desperate measures, and Col. Lynch, then a leading whig, apprehended and had them punished, without any superfluous ceremony. Hence the origin of the term ‘Lynch Law.’ This practice of Lynching continued years after the war, and was applied to many cases of mere suspicion of guilt, which could not be regularly proven.”[52] In a book written a few years later than the above, Howe has the following to say on the same subject: “The Lynch Law, as it is termed, originated in Virginia at the time of the American Revolution, and was first adopted by Colonel Lynch against a lawless band of tories and desperadoes, who infested the country at the base of the Blue Ridge. This plan was afterwards followed in the west, and its operation was salutary in ridding the country of miscreants whom the law was not strong enough to punish. The tribunal of _Squire Birch_, as the person who personated the judge was called, was established under a tree in the woods; the culprit being usually found guilty was tied to a tree and lashed without mercy, and then expelled from the country. In general, ‘_the regulators_’ only exercised this law upon the most base and vile characters.”[53]