THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE. The title of our chapter will bring up to the minds of all who visited California, during its early days, some startling recollections. The Vigilance Committee was the institution of that country, striking terror into all evil doers. Like all energetic associations, it was capable of being abused and sometimes ran into extremes, but its worst enemies cannot deny that it was the only thing which could suppress crime at the time it was in power. Great mistakes are made in regard to this organization by most writers who have spoken of it. They have committed the very common error of judging of the institutions of one set of people by the standard of another. They have applied to California the same rule which would guide them in their judgment of an Atlantic State. In reality, however, there is no parallel between the two. The latter is inhabited by a population educated to regard the law as the paramount authority. The lawless are in the minority among them. Years of good government have taught the criminal to look upon the public authorities as his bitterest foes, and the honest man to regard them as his friends and protectors. In California, however, every thing was the reverse of this. No sooner were her doors thrown open and her treasures disclosed, than people from every quarter of the globe thronged to her shores. Men of industrious habits and adventurous spirit went thither of course, as they always hasten to every new field of enterprise. The crowd of newcomers, however, was swelled by others of a far different character. Plunder was of course to be had, and the swindlers and desperadoes, who live by their wits, were quite as eager to visit the new country as were the honest miners who had come to wrench fortune from the flinty bowels of the earth by their brawny arms. Villains from all parts of the world swarmed upon the new soil. Cunning sharpers from New England, desperate vagabonds from Texas, bogus men from the north-west, and reckless plunderers from the prairies hastened to California like crows to a corn-field. Mexico sent thither her sly robbers, Chili and Peru furnished their secret assassins. The penal colonies of Great Britain vomited their refuse upon this unhappy land, and even savage pirates from the Eastern Archipelago found their way to El Dorado. The territory numbered among her inhabitants accomplished thieves, burglars and cut-throats from every civilized and barbarous country within reach, men who had been familiar with courts and jails, and all punishments short of death.