however the robber was brought to quick justice by the miners.  Robbery was not countenanced in the camps.  If one should steal, his fellows would rise up, try him in a hastily convened court, and condemn him to death, and hang him on the nearest tree.  It was a rule that the body should be exposed for twenty-four hours as a warning to others.  All this may seem harsh, but under the circumstances it was the only way in which justice could be dealt out to offenders.  The camps were in consequence orderly and safe.  We must not think, because the Vigilance Committees of the mining camps and of the city took the administration of law into their own hands that therefore they were lawless and that their rule was that of the mob.  No, this was the only way in which peaceable citizens could be protected from the violence and crimes perpetrated by the turbulent and disorderly and vicious elements of society.  In the years 1851 and 1852 there was great lawlessness in San Francisco.  Bad men, who had served terms in prisons for their misdeeds, and men who wished to disorganise society, who had the spirit of anarchy in their breasts, organised themselves into bands for the purpose of stealing and killing, and good citizens stood in mortal fear of them.  Buildings were burned at pleasure, houses were broken open and robberies committed, and even murder was resorted to when the wrongdoers found it necessary in the accomplishment of their hellish purposes.  The officials of the city were careless in punishing offenders, indeed they were powerless to do so, and the lawbreakers knew this.  It is said that over a hundred persons were murdered during the period of six months; and the blood of these victims cried to Heaven for vengeance.  To assert the majesty of law and to punish criminals a large number of the best citizens, who grieved over the evils which prevailed, organised themselves into the famous Vigilance Committee.  The seal which they adopted showed their worthy purpose.  In the centre was the figure of a human eye to denote watchfulness.  Above the eye was the word, Committee,—­beneath, Vigilance; then the name, San Francisco.  Around the edge of the seal ran the legends:  “Fiat Justitia Ruat Coelum.  No creed; no party; no sectional issues.”  While not constituted exactly like the Court of Areopagus, yet the Vigilance Committee of San Francisco did for a time exercise authority over life and death like the Athenian judges on Mars’ Hill.  The shaft of lightning first fell on an ex-convict who was caught stealing.  Eighty members of the Committee tried and convicted him, and on the same night he was hanged in Portsmouth Square in view of the saloons.  A thrill ran through the whole community, and when, the next morning, the people read the names of the prominent citizens who served on the Committee, their action made a deep and salutary impression.  The Vigilance Committee prosecuted its work till the city was purged of its evils, and it exercised from time to time its authority