“Acknowledged and subscribed in the presence of “C——T. H——n, “J——P. D——n,” and five others, who seem to have been a portion of “the fellow-citizens of this settlement,” referred to in the document.[132] The companies of Regulators were generally organized only temporarily to meet some emergency in particular communities. The one striking exception is the Regulation movement in the Carolinas. The circumstances surrounding that movement, however, were not paralleled elsewhere. The duration and strength of the organization there, was undoubtedly due to the prominence of the political factor in its existence. Leaving out of consideration the Carolina Regulation and the summary practices which were incident to the Revolutionary War, there existed almost exclusively down to 1830 what may be called the frontier type of lynch-law pure and simple. This form of lynch-law procedure has always been justified on the ground of necessity, and has been condemned only because of its liability to abuse. As one writer has said, referring to the Regulators: “Their acts may sometimes have been high-handed and unjustifiable, but on the whole—and it is only in such a view that social institutions are to be estimated—they were the preservers of the communities for whom they acted. In time, it is true, they degenerated, and sometimes the corps fell into the hands of the very men they were organized to punish. “Every social organization is liable to misdirection, and this, among others, has been perverted to the furtherance of selfish and unprincipled purposes; for, like prejudices and habits of thought, organized institutions frequently survive the necessities which call them into existence. Abuses grow up under all systems; and, perhaps, the worst abuse of all, is a measure or expedient, good though temporary, retained after the passing away of the time for which it was adopted.”[133]