As long as I have lived in California I have never carried a weapon of
defense, and never could see much danger. I tried to follow the right
trail so as to shun bad men, and never found much difficulty in doing
so. We hear much of the Vigilance Committee of early days. It was an
actual necessity of former times. The gold fields not only attracted the
good and brave, but also the worst and most lawless desperadoes of the
world at large. England's banished convicts came here from the penal
colonies of Australia and Van Diemen's Land. They had wonderful ideas of
freedom. In their own land the stern laws and numerous constabulary had
not been able to keep them from crime. A colony of criminals did not
improve in moral tone, and when the most reckless and daring of all
these were turned loose in a country like California, where the
machinery of laws and officers to execute them was not yet in order,
these lawless "Sidney Ducks," as they were called, felt free to rob and
murder, and human life or blood was not allowed to stand between them
and their desires. Others of the same general stripe came from Mexico
and Chili, and Texas and Western Missouri furnished another class almost
as bad.
The Vigilance Committee of San Francisco was composed of the best men in
the world. They endured all that was heaped upon them by these lawless
men, and the law of self protection forced them to organize for the
swift apprehension and punishment of crime, and the preservation of
their property and lives.
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