an irregular and unconstitutional mode of administering justice in some parts of the United States of America, California, &c., and which is said to have been so called from a farmer of Virginia named Lynch, who, on one occasion, without waiting for public justice, chased a thief, tied him to a tree, and there flogged him. Some defend this rude mode of summary justice on the ground of the difficulty which is experienced in certain unsettled districts and states of society of enforcing regular and formal law. But while this swift method of avenging public wrong may sometimes have a salutary effect in curbing lawlessness, it must surely, when frequently adopted, contribute to demoralization rather than good order in a community. Marryat, in his Diary in America, instances fifty- nine assassinations in a single year in a town of Virginia with 3000 inhabitants. There have been frequent instances, especially in the southern states of the Union, of violent outbreaks of popular revenge, under the form of lynch law, against the advocates, real or supposed, of the abolition of slavery. (See Miss Martineau's Society in America.)