Abstractly considered,
the hanging of the gamblers at Vicksburg was of but little consequence.
They constitute a portion of population that is worse than useless in any
community; and their death, if no pernicious example be set by it, is
never matter of reasonable regret with any one. If they were annually
swept from the stage of existence by the plague or smallpox, honest men
would perhaps be much profited by the operation. Similar too is the
correct reasoning in regard to the burning of the negro at St. Louis.
He had forfeited his life by the perpetration of an outrageous murder
upon one of the most worthy and respectable citizens of the city, and had
he not died as he did, he must have died by the sentence of the law in a
very short time afterwards. As to him alone, it was as well the way it
was as it could otherwise have been. But the example in either case was
fearful. When men take it in their heads to-day to hang gamblers or burn
murderers, they should recollect that in the confusion usually attending
such transactions they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is
neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is, and that, acting upon the
example they set, the mob of to-morrow may, and probably will, hang or
burn some of them by the very same mistake.
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