Copartners no longer, a division of the
spoils, when accumulated, was usually terminated by a resort to blows;
and the bold spirit and the strong hand, in this way, not uncommonly
acquired the share for which the proprietor was too indolent to toil in
the manner of his companions.
The issue of these conflicts, as may be imagined, was sometimes wounds
and bloodshed, and occasionally death: the field, we need scarcely
add--since this is the history of all usurpation--remaining, in every
such case, in possession of the party proving itself most courageous or
strong. Nor need this history surprise--it is history, veracious and
sober history of a period, still within recollection, and of events of
almost recent occurrence. The wild condition of the country--the absence
of all civil authority, and almost of laws, certainly of officers
sufficiently daring to undertake their honest administration, and
shrinking from the risk of incurring, in the performance of their
duties, the vengeance of those, who, though disagreeing among
themselves, at all times made common cause against the ministers of
justice as against a common enemy--may readily account for the frequency
and impunity with which these desperate men committed crime and defied
its consequences.
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