Note 10 — PART II. ECONOMY. (continued 2)

It is possible that this term may not yet be familiar to some of my English readers. It means summary punishment. The modes now in use among those who take the law into their own hands in the United States, are tarring and feathering, scourging with a cow-hide, banishing, and hanging. The term owes its derivation to a farmer of the name of Lynch, living on the Mississippi, who, in the absence of court and lawyers, constituted himself a judge, and ordered summary punishment to be inflicted on an offender. He little foresaw the national disgrace which would arise from the extension of the practice to which he gave his name.