Against doctrine of this sort none will protest but the politicians in power, under whose lax administration of a great trust there has arisen one of the saddest spectacles of human history, the decay of the great American principles of liberty and fair play. The criminals of our city are bold, because they, if not ourselves, know of this decay. They, if not ourselves, know the weakness of that political system to which we have, in carelessness equaling that of the California miners of old--a carelessness based upon a madness of money equal to or surpassing that of the gold stampedes--delegated our sacred personal rights to live freely, to own property, and to protect each for himself his home. THE END End of Project Gutenberg's The Story of the Outlaw, by Emerson Hough