Mob Violence and Popular Sovereignty

By the middle of the eighteenth century mob violence had become "a purposive weapon of protest and dissent in both Great Britain and America." ²¹ Moreover, the colonies had experienced substantial insurrectionary behavior, most notably in Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia ( 1676-1677) and the overthrow of Governor Edmund Andros of Massachusetts ( 1689). Patriot leaders after 1760 resorted to "politics out of doors" in their struggle for independence. Richard Matwell Brown has counted at least thirty instances of coordinated riots between 1760 and 1775 aimed directly at the British and most especially at enforcement of customs laws. ²²

Mob action was often quite spectacular. Following passage of the Stamp Act in 1765, for example, a mob attacked the home of Thomas Hutchinson, whose decision in favor of his old friend Paxton in the Writs of Assistance Case was remembered. The Boston mob attacked with such fury that it battered down the walls, burned the furniture, destroyed the library, tore windows and doors from their frames, and cut down the trees in the Hutchinson yard. Yet there was also an understanding that mob action, as deplorable as it might be, had validity within the constitutional order. Hutchinson himself in 1768 noted that "mobs a sort of them at least are constitutional." ²³ Hutchinson was not pleased with the destruction of his home, but he nonetheless recognized, as even did the House of Lords, that "rioting is an essential part of our constitution." Popular impatience constituted a necessary force in the maintenance of free institutions. "Anarchy," John Adams observed, "can never last long, and tyranny may be perpetual." ²⁴

The patriots justified revolutionary violence as an expression of "popular sovereignty" and the will of the majority. Civil disobedience, mob action, collective protest, and vigilante action against individuals became the connective tissue that gave substance to constitutional notions of rights requiring protection. Yet this violent basis for legal change exposed the "demonic side of our national history." ²⁵ The rule of law might have a popular base but "popular justice" had to be balanced by regard for procedural regularity.

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Date: 2015-01-29; view: 918