In several respects there is a resemblance between the means which were employed by the early settlers for protection against Indian depredators and the methods which have been adopted in more recent years for the punishment of public offenders. In their purpose, in their organization, and in their summary infliction of the death penalty, the Rangers were not unlike the vigilance committees which have been closely identified with the later operation of the frontier type of lynch-law. In breaking open jails, and, as in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in massacring inmates against whom there was a strong popular resentment, or, as in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in liberating prisoners whose criminal conduct was generally justified in the community, there appear some of the distinctive features which have marked the later operation of lynch-law in well settled communities. It is also probably true that the antagonistic relations which existed between the whites and the Indians during the early history of this country directly encouraged a popular disregard of all legal procedure on the part of the whites when dealing with Indians. But the use of summary measures against Indians and the attendant occurrences can scarcely be said to mark the beginning of the operation of lynch-law in America. The meaning which was at first attached to the term Lynch’s law and the nature of the practice which first came to be known by that name preclude such a beginning for the practice. Lynch’s law originally corresponded much more closely to what was known as “regulating,” a practice which was early adopted not only where the frontier type of society existed, but also where there was the stable and better organized form of society characteristic of older communities. The following appeared in the New York Gazette of December 18, 1752: “We hear from _Elizabeth-Town_, that an odd Sect of People have lately appeared there, who go under the Denomination of _Regulars_: there are near a Dozen of them, who dress themselves in Women’s Cloaths, and painting their Faces, go in the Evening to the Houses of such as are reported to have beat their Wives: where one of them entering in first, seizes the Delinquent, whilst the rest follow, strip him, turn up his Posteriors and flog him with Rods most severely, crying out all the Time, _Wo to the Men that beat their Wives_:—It seems that several Persons in that Borough, (and ’tis said some very deservedly) have undergone the Discipline, to the no small Terror of others, who are in any Way conscious of deserving the same Punishment. ’Twere to be wish’d, that in order for the more equal Distribution of Justice, there wou’d arise another Sect, under the Title of _Regulatrixes_ who should dress themselves in Mens Cloathes, and flagilate the Posteriors of the Scolds, Termagants, &c., &c.”[72]