The laws of the State made it the duty of every sheriff to preserve the peace of the State, but the Terrys were permitted, undisturbed and unchecked, to proclaim their intention to break the peace.  If they had announced their intention, for nearly a year, to assassinate the judges of the Supreme Court of the State, would they have been permitted to take their lives, before being made to feel the power of the State?  Would an organized banditti be permitted to unseat State judges by violence, and only feel the strong halter of the law after they had accomplished their purpose?  Can no preventive measures be taken under the police powers of the State, when ruffians give notice that they are about to obstruct the administration of justice by the murder of high judicial officers?  It was not so much to insure the punishment of Terry and his wife if they should murder Justice Field, as to prevent the murder, that the executive branch of the United States Government surrounded him with the necessary safeguards.  How can justice be administered under the federal statutes if the federal judges must fight their way, while going from district to district, to overcome armed and vindictive litigants who differ with them concerning the judgments they have rendered?

But it was said Judge Terry could have been held to bail to keep the peace.  The highest bail that can be required in such cases under the law of the State is five thousand dollars.

What restraint would that have been upon Terry, who was so filled with malice and so reckless of consequences that he finally braved the gallows by attempting the murder of the object of his hate?  But even this weak protection never was afforded.  Shall it be said that Justice Field ought to have gone to the nearest justice of the peace and obsequiously begged to have Terry placed under bonds?  But this he could not have done until he reached the State, and he was in peril from the moment that he reached the State line.  The dust had not been brushed from his clothing before some of the papers which announced his arrival eagerly inquired what Terry would do and when he would do it.  Some of them seemed most anxious for the sensation that a murder would produce.

The State was active enough when Terry had been prevented from doing his bloody work upon Justice Field.  The constable who had been telegraphed for before the train reached Lathrop on the fatal day, but who could not be found, and was not at the station to aid in preserving the peace, was quick enough to arrest Neagle without a warrant, for an act not committed in his presence, and therefore known only to him by hearsay.  Against the remonstrances of a supreme justice of the United States, who had also been chief justice of California, and who might have been supposed to know the laws as well at least as a constable, the protection placed over him by the Executive branch of the Federal Government was unlawfully taken from