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"God forbid that even such crimes as those which wrought frenzy in the brain of that SaKsbury uprising—the crime of the wild beast, Euel Lee, who wiped out, at/one fell stroke, the lives of a worthy wedded pair and their two innocent young daughters, because of a disagreement, over a dollar—the crime of the other wild beast who butchered his employer, a prominent and useful citizen of Salisbury, because he thought that he should receive for his services more than fifteen cents an hour—should hurry rwe into an attempt to justify the killing, much lesis the burning, of the criminal last mentioned, Matthew Williams.
"Close as every group of American citizens are to the representative a-gcncies of their government, and passionately impelled as they may be, at times to reclaim the authority that they have delegated to courts of justice, they have no right, when they lynch, to expect anything but stern retribution at the hands of the law.
"It is easy to see where lynching begins, but not so easy to see where, indefensibility of lynching furnishes if unchecked, it would stop; but the no just reason why, when a lynching occurs in a single community on the Eastern Shore, the entire population of that extensive region should be defamed as mentally and spiritually backward. Edmund Burke did not "know how to frame an indictment a-gainst an entire people; apparently, Dr. Mitchell does, though our own fles'h and blood.
"The mental and spiritual backwardness of the Eastern Shore is supposed by him to be attributable to geographical isolation, due to the interposition of the Chesapeake Bay between the Eastern and Western Shores of Maryland, but, when it is remembered how close the Eastern Shore is to the doors of two of the greatest cities in the world, Philadelphia and New York, it is hard to believe that the loss of mental stimulus and spiritual exaltation, which the Eastern Shore suffers from/ not being nearer to such an abode of intellectual power and seraphic sinlessness as Baltimore, can be quite so pronounced as Dr. Mitchell seems to think.
"At any rate, the situation is' certainly not likely to be mitigated, in a social, political or economic sense, by assailing the mental and spiritual character of the whole people of the Eastern Shore, converting the Eastern and Western Shores of Maryland into warring camps, and making the Chesapeake Bay even wider than it now is.
"I do not agree with the convictions of the Eastern Shore about prohibition, but of these convictions, inspired by the grave abuses which undeniably attend excess in strong drink, it can at least be said that, unlike most political convictions, they are entirely disinterested. I think, besides, that too much sectarian prejudice exists on the Eastern Shore as well as in other kindred communities, but I do not forget that its people are of pure, almost unmtixed, English descent, and that a certain amount of sectarian prejudice is inseparable from that descent.
"Nor if sectarian extravagance, which I condemn, no matter from what source it emanates, is to be charged to the people of the Eastern Shore, can it be rationally asserted that it is limited solely to the religious sects predominant on the Eastern Shore.
"I do not know w.hether Dr. Mitchell deems the Eastern Shore to be backward in an economic sense or not. He must; for thrift and mental backwardness are rarely found associated. Suffice it to say that the idea is laughable.
"Some years ago, I took occasion to say, in a public address at Salisbury, that I believed that Salisbury was the biggest town of 10,000 inhabitants in the world. It has a hotel that would be creditable to a population 100,-000 souls. It ,has a fire department worthy to be part of a metropolitan fire department. Its main street, at times, is so crowded with vehicles that one has to pick his way cautiously a-cross it.
"Few more attractive little towns than Snow Hill, Princess Anne, Cambridge, Easton, Centreville, Chester-town and Denton are to be found anywhere. The fields that surround them bear every evidence of studious and intelligent tilth. Their .hotels hold out every measure of comfort that the wayfarer can reasonably expect incenters of their restricted scope. One cannot miove along the roads that lead up to them without being struck with the .heavy burden of transportation that trucks are unceasingly carrying over these roads; and their well-tor cars parked, or in motion, on their stocked stores, and the numerous mo-streets, are unmistakably indicative of brisk activity."
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