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yer's aphorism that it is the certainty not the severity of punishment that is a deterrent to crime. Not so has it proved on the Shore, and elsewhere in the South, and our people know it; but lynching is a deterrent and the record shows it. It has been many years since in this region the people took the law into their own hands in cases like the present, and the paucity of capital crimes in the period since is certainly significant. Not from our home negroes does the trouble usually come. Most of them are as estimable citizens as one could wish, and unless excited and perverted by fictitious hopes raised by preying Defense
Leagues, interloping lawyers, and pusillanimous pamphleteers from across the Bay they manage to live comfortably and harmoniously, working out their own destiny.
Our people have given Mr. Mencken the Moralizer his day in court. His summing up is before them. It has been duly read and considered, and the practically unanimous verdict is that his premises are false, his conclusions are wrong, and his cause is bad.
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