The Vigilantes of Montana: 1864 Revisited

Justice in the British Columbia Gold Camps

One fact, at any rate, stands out prominently in any comparison between the executive government of British Columbia and those formed on the representative principle in the American territories: namely, that in British Columbia, crime was promptly and justly dealt with, and that there never was a lynching nor a vigilante committee, nor occasion for either; while in the American Territories there was scarcely one important camp which did not have some "statistics of blood" and where there was not some sort of lynching or some form of a vigilante committee. Not that there were no murders in British Columbia, for there were such occasionally, and criminals sometimes escaped across the border; but generally on the committing of a crime a magistrate was soon on the spot, and instant measures were taken for bringing culprits to justice without delay and -- without interference of the people. It is safe to say, I think, that order was as well kept and law as well administered in British Columbia during the mining rushes, as in any older community having good law and order. It is fair, on the other hand, to remember that the United States was in the midst of a trying war, and that the best administrators of the northwest had been withdrawn for service in the war, but still the difference is so pronounced as to suggest that it arose mainly from the differences between the systems of government in the two regions. There was no essential difference in the characteristics of the mining populations; Cariboo in the United States would have been an ideal field for road-agents and vigilante committees, and Kootenay was near the border. But in British Columbia there was Law, and an Executive, and a Chief Justice, and a Magistracy that expected obedience. and the mining population rendered obedience willingly.