The usual manner of proceeding was for the settlers to consult together and in a more or less formal way to establish “the institution of Regulators.” Sometimes the Regulators were small bodies of men chosen by the people to look after the interests of the community—in effect, they were committees of safety. At other times, the Regulators were bodies of men who voluntarily assumed the duty of policing a district. The duties of such companies, whether known as Regulators or as Rangers or by some other name, were to ferret out and punish criminals, to drive out “suspicious characters,” and to exercise a general supervision over the interests of the settlements in which they lived. Their statute-book was the “code of his honor, Judge Lynch”[130]; their order of trial was similar to that of a “drum-head court-martial”; the principles of their punishment were certainty, rapidity, and inexorability. They were in themselves judges, juries, witnesses, and executioners. These bodies of men bound themselves by a regular compact, to the people and to each other, to rid the community of all thieves, robbers, plunderers, and villains of every description. Such compacts were usually verbal but they were sometimes in writing.[131] The compact entered into by the Regulators of North Carolina has already been cited. If the agreement of 1780 in Virginia, to which the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger gave his indorsement, be accepted as genuine, we have a record of another such compact. There is recorded, also, a compact entered into by a company of Regulators in Illinois in 1820. It reads as follows: “_Know all men by these presents_: “That we (_here follow twelve names_), citizens of —— settlement, in the state of Illinois, have this day, _jointly and severally_, bound themselves together as a company of Rangers and Regulators, to protect this settlement against the crimes and misdemeanors of, all and singular, every person or persons whomsoever, and especially against _all horse-thieves, and renegades, and robbers_. And we do by these presents, hereby bind ourselves, jointly and severally as aforesaid, unto each other, and to the fellow-citizens of this settlement, to punish, according to the code of his honor, Judge Lynch, all violations of the law, _against the peace and dignity of the said people of_ —— settlement; and to discover and bring to speedy punishment, _all illegal combinations_—to rid the country of such as are dangerous to the welfare of this settlement—to preserve the peace, and _generally to vindicate the law_, within the settlement aforesaid. All of which purposes we are to accomplish as peaceably as possible: _but we are to accomplish them one way or another_. “In testimony whereof, we have hereunto set our hands and affixed our seals, this twelfth day of October, _Anno Domini_, eighteen hundred and twenty. (Signed by twelve men.)