New York Daily Tribune

The Address of the Vigilance Committee of San Francisco is a document which ought to secure the very gravest consideration. There can be no doubt or demur as to the reality and fearful character of the abuses which called that Committee into existence. The elections of San Francisco, and measurably of other Californian cities, had degenerated into the grossest farces. The result was determined by votes corruptly placed in the ballot boxes, and even by returns which had no basis even in fraudulent votes. Men had themselves chosen (or returned) judges, or inspectors, of elections in order to make out of the position the most that any candidate or ticket would pay to be "put through." Often the agents of those bully inspectors were negotiating with both parties at once, endeavoring to incite them to bid against each other, and ready to return whichever should finally be screwed up to the highest notch. In at least one instance, a gambler and felon was declared chosen Alderman whom nobody had known to be a candidate. Of course, where imps thus boldly played both hands, the evil one was pretty certain to win. San Francisco became more and more disorderly, its Government more and more corrupt and inefficient for any good, until the best citizens were murdered in broad daylight, by men who relied on their money and their influence with the wretches in office to screen them from the legal penalties of their crimes. Of course, all these crimes, requiring many shrewd and daring accomplices, cost money—hundreds of thousands if not millions per annum—and the culprits who were the immediate beneficiaries were intent on plunder as well as power and impunity. The ballot-box stuffers and other agents must either be paid directly or enabled and emboldened to pay themselves. Hence peculation ran a reckless race with impunity in general crime; and while the honest, industrious thousands had security neither for life nor property, they were taxed thrice what an energetic, fearless, efficient Government should have cost.

Such being the undoubted evils, we turn to the Address of the Vigilance Committee to learn what progress has, under its auspices, been made toward their eradication; and we regret to say that the answer we glean therefrom is most discouraging. That there were thousands of villains in San Francisco we already knew; that they had obtained control of the machinery by which functionaries are chosen and the machinery of republican government kept in motion, we are convinced; but what has the rule of the Vigilance Committee substituted for this? A secret, unlawful, self-constituted, utterly irresponsible association, which holds the power of life and death, of banishment and confiscation, in its hands, defying the constituted authorities and fortifying itself with cannon and bayonets; and when we look to its latest manifesto for some indication of the issue contemplated by its master spirits, we find nothing calculated to allay anxiety or justify hope that the evil days are past. On the contrary, this document clearly regards the present condition as chronic, and confounds, as Burke says, the extreme medicine of the body politic with its daily bread. The Committee, after five weeks undisturbed possession of more than regal power, talk of the duty devolved on them of "gathering evidence, and, "after due trial, expelling from the community "those who have so long outraged the peace and "good order of society," as if they were just commencing their labors, and expected to continue in the discharge of their self-imposed duties for a series of months, if not years.

We believe this should not and will not be permitted. At all events, the Committee should have indicated some limit beyond which its labors will not be protracted, within which its duties shall be completed. To talk of working on until "the "community shall be freed from the evils it has so "long endured"—until "we shall have assured to "our citizens an honest and vigorous protection of "their rights"—is to trifle with a very grave subject. How are these "evils" to be removed, these "rights" secured, except by the enactment or modification of laws?—by the denunciation and enforcement of legal penalties? Suppose the Committee could detect, expose and banish all the villains in San Francisco, could they prevent the influx of others by every boat? They might as well undertake to bail out the ocean as to thoroughly cure the evils they confront by the means they now possess. We hope to hear soon that they have reconsidered their position, matured certain acts or amendments of acts calculated to shield the community from future outrages like those so justly inveighed against, ascertained that the Governor will gladly call the Legislature to meet in extra session to consider those propositions, and then relinquished their power and dissolved their organization. Unless they determine to bring the present anomalous and perilous condition to a speedy end, they will find themselves arraigned as the authors of evils even more flagrant than those they have labored—honestly, we doubt not, but it seems to us far from wisely—to overcome.