King Mob and Contempt of Congress

On March 27, 1699, the House of Commons considered a petition of Royal Navy pursers—warrant officers responsible for handling money onboard naval vessels. The pursers complained of physical abuse by their commanders while they served at sea. An angry mob consisting of seamen and their wives gathered outside the House during session. The House summoned the justices of the peace for Middlesex and Westminster to attend the House, bring constables with them, and disperse the mob. The authorities took one James Gardener into custody for inciting a riot by uttering insolent words. Gardener was promptly convicted and committed to the Gatehouse for his contempt. This is the earliest precedent I found confirming contempt liability lies for inciting a disturbance at the seat of government.

Purser Rioters’ Case, 13 H.C. Jo. 228, 230–31 (Mar. 27, 1699).

Angry sailors would find their way back to Westminster in the course of the following century. They faced difficulties with unemployment and wage rates following the end of the Seven Years War. In May 1768, for example, somewhere between five and fifteen thousand of them presented a petition to Parliament conveying their grievances. After they did so, however, they simply gave three cheers and dispersed. I am not aware of any historian who would label these disturbances as incidents of “populism” per se. In fact, most petition movements in the eighteenth century, whether they involved riots or not, appear to be simply trade lobbying by other means. The next two disturbances, in my view, however, did savor of populism and nationalism, were of a much greater magnitude, and left an indelible mark on the political landscape.

George Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty: A Social Study of 1763 to 1774, 91–92, 103 (1962) [hereinafter, “Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty”]; John Stevenson, Popular Disturbances: 1700–1832, 89–92, 155–56 (2d ed. 1992).

There was no figure in the annals of Hanoverian London whose personality was more flamboyant or whose politics were more electrifying than John Wilkes. Wilkes was born to a wealthy distiller in London on October 17, 1725. He married well, served as High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire in 1754, and was elected as MP for Aylesbury in 1757. He was a notorious libertine with an earthly appetite. He was, for example, a member of the Hellfire Club, a secret society that carried out orgiastic rituals at Medmenham Abbey, and filled his belly at the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks in Covent Garden. Edmund Burke characterized him as a “lively agreeable man, but of no prudence and no principle.” Benjamin Franklin called him “an outlaw and exile of bad personal character, not worth a farthing.” In 1762, he cofounded an opposition paper, The North Briton, to rival Tobias Smollett's pro-government publication, The Briton. The title of Wilkes’ publication winked at North-South relations, which, as in the United States today, remain an important political axis. Wilkes’ publication was dark and satirical, but managed to kick off without any legal reprisals.

Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, supra note 33, at xiii–xiv, 18–21.

Controversy did not hold off for long. On April 23, 1763, The North Briton printed issue No. 45, which included a scathing critique of George III's speech in favor of the Peace of Paris. No. 45 ignited a political chain reaction that distinguished Wilkes as the demagogue of the decade. Officers of the Crown concluded that No. 45 went too far and constituted seditious libel. They discovered that Wilkes personally edited No. 45 but were impeded from prosecuting him initially because of the privilege of freedom from arrest Wilkes enjoyed as a sitting MP. MPs were generally immune from arrest under the lex parliamentaria. The authorities justified their decision to arrest Wilkes anyway on the theory that Wilkes’ libel constituted a breach of peace and therefore could not be shielded by parliamentary privilege. A general warrant was issued. The Sergeant at Arms of the House of Commons executed the warrant on April 30, apprehended Wilkes, and committed him to the Tower of London.

John Wilkes’ Case [1763], 19 Howell's St. Tr. 981, 990, 993 (1816); Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, supra note 33, at 23–24.

The Court of Common Pleas granted a writ of habeas corpus and called Wilkes to the bar on May 3. Wilkes played to the crowd in court, declaring that “the liberty of an Englishman should ‘not be sported away with impunity.’”

Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, supra note 33, at 26.

“Wilkes and Liberty” was a genius slogan and a populist one by today's standards. It evoked patriotic tropes expressed in songs like “The Roast Beef of Old England.” It embodied popular political totems like Magna Charta, Alfred the Great, “the true born Englishman,” etc. It reflected Wilkes’ rhetoric of liberty that addressed the people's passion for English constitutionalism, fervor for fundamental freedoms, and resistance to arbitrary power. It played upon a resentment and suspicion against propertied elites harbored by the working classes during the eighteenth century that fueled the force of opposition to the government. Wilkes’ wit and charisma won him a large following as a favored Radical in those demographics. He manipulated them with the help of external interests of wealthier merchants, manufacturers, and tradesmen to fulfill his own political ambitions much like the demagogues of today.

See Horace William Bleackley, Life of John Wilkes 5–6, 47–48, (1917); Lucy Sutherland, The City of London in Eighteenth-Century Politics, in Essays Presented to Sir Lewis Namier 49, 60 (Richard Pares & A.J.P. Taylor ed. 1956); Thompson, supra note 25, at 69–71 & n.1, 79–81, 83; Namier & Brooke, supra note 25, at 331–35.

Wilkes also owed his success to his penchant for political playfulness, and attracted complimentary slogans like “Beef and Liberty,” no doubt inspired by the “sublime society” of which he was a member. That he was an ugly, witty, devious rake made him even more glamorous. He refused to play the lamb and struck back hard against the government for subjecting him to effectively what constituted a political trial by ordeal. He filed a civil suit and recouped £2,900 in damages for false imprisonment. Despite the technicality of the Court's reasoning, the mob believed that the judgment vindicated their disapproval of general warrants. Wilkes was their man, a mirror for both reflecting and projecting their contempt for the government.

Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, supra note 33, at 28.

Wilkes did not surrender his pen. He helped to publish an obscene poem parodying Alexander Pope's “Essay on Man,” entitled “Essay on Woman,” later that year. Both Houses of Parliament balked at the judgment of the Court of Common Pleas. Incensed by Wilkes’ continuing insolence, they debated a resolution to exclude libelous conduct from the protection of the parliamentary privilege from arrest when they resumed session on November 15, 1763. Members of the House of Lords found the “Essay on Woman,” in particular, to be a “most scandalous, obscene, and impious libel,” and possibly grounds for expulsion. John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, delivered the complaint to the House of Lords seeking Wilkes’ expulsion on November 16, 1763. As a fellow member of the Hellfire Club, Montagu was by no means disinterested. He sought retaliation for a prank Wilkes played on him during a séance at one of their meetings.

Proceedings in the Lords Against Mr. Wilkes for Publishing the Essay on Woman (Nov. 15, 17, 1763; Dec. 14, 1763; Jan. 24, 1764), reprinted in William Cobbett, 15 Parliamentary History of England from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the Year 1803, 1346, 1346–1352 (1808); Proceedings in the Commons Against Mr. Wilkes for Writing the North Briton, Number Forty-Five (Nov. 15, 23–24, 1763), reprinted in id. at 1354–1364; Donald Goddard, The Hell-Fire Club: Visions of Debauchery Danced in Their Heads, N.Y. Times (Feb. 27, 1972)

On November 24, the House of Commons approved the following resolution by a vote of 258 to 133: “That Privilege of Parliament does not extend to the case of writing and publishing seditious Libels, nor ought to be allowed to obstruct the ordinary course of the laws, in the speedy and effectual prosecution of so heinous and dangerous an offence.” William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham, spoke out strongly against this retreat of privilege. “This proposed sacrifice of privilege,” he said, “was putting every member of parliament, who did not vote with the minister, under a perpetual terror of imprisonment.” Lord Richard Grenville-Temple, 2nd Earl Temple, led a similar resistance in the upper chamber. But all was for naught. The House of Lords did not agree with the Great Commoner or Grenville-Temple. It passed a concurring resolution on November 29 supporting the Commons instead. Expulsion proceedings began on December 9. Wilkes fled to Paris, so he was tried in absentia. On January 19, 1764, the House of Commons found Wilkes in contempt of its privileges, expelled him for seditious libel, and declared him an outlaw for absconding.

The Lords’ Report of Precedents and Punishments for Breaches of Privilege and Contempts of Their House (Mar. 8, 1764), reprinted in William Cobbett, 15 Parliamentary History of England from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the Year 1803, 1352, 1352–1354 (1808); John Wilke's Case, 29 H.C. Jo. 843 (Feb. 14, 1764); Proceedings in the Commons Concerning General Warrants and the Seizure of Papers (1764), reprinted in id. at 1393, 1399; Proceedings in the Lords Against Mr. Wilkes for Publishing the Essay on Woman (Nov. 15, 17, 1763; Dec. 14, 1763; Jan. 24, 1764), reprinted in id. at 1346–1352; Proceedings in the Commons on the Expulsion of Mr. Wilkes (Dec. 9, 16, 1763; Jan. 19, 1764), reprinted in id. at 1386–1388; Proceedings in Both Houses Respecting the Riot at the Burning the North Briton Number 45 (Dec. 6–7, 1763), reprinted in id. at 1380, 1380–86; Address of Both Houses to the King Concerning the North Briton, Number Forty-Five (Dec. 1, 1763), reprinted in id. at, 1378–1380; Protest Against the Resolution, “That Privilege of Parliament Does Not Extend to the Case of Libels” (Nov. 29, 1763), reprinted in id. at 1371–1378; Proceedings in the Lords Against Mr. Wilkes for Writing the North Briton Number Forty-Five (Nov. 29, 1763), reprinted in id., at 1365–1371.

Pressured by his debts, Wilkes was forced to return to England in 1768. He stood for election to Parliament in Middlesex and won. In the interim, Sir John Pratt, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, ruled that general warrants were illegal.

Entick v. Carrington [1765], 19 Howell's St. Tr. 1029 (1816).

The next day, Parliament opened session. The thirteenth assembly was inaugurated by a demonstration at King's Bench prison and later at St. George's Fields by as many as forty thousand people. The Wilkites grew restless as the day went on. Justice Samuel Gillam, a magistrate of Surrey, eventually read the Riot Act. The feverish mass, undeterred, eventually compelled the soldiers to open fire. Five or six people in the crowd were killed and fifteen were wounded, casualties for whom the whole ordeal was later named “The St. George's Field Massacre.” Disorder spread to other parts of the capital, including the seat of government itself. A riot formed in Old Palace Yard and outside of the House of Lords. One John Biggs was later found criminally liable for disturbing the peace.

Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, supra note 33, at 53; Meeting of the New Parliament (May 10, 1768), reprinted in William Cobbett, 16 Parliamentary History of England from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the Year 1803, 424, 424–28 (1808); Riot Act of 1715, 1 Geo. 1 stat. 2. c. 5.

Though the riots were violent and ugly, Wilkes gained even greater political momentum from the power asymmetry between the military and the mob. The troops who fired on the crowd belonged to a Scottish regiment, doubly detested by Londoners both as soldiers and as foreigners (Celts). The coroner returned a guilty verdict for intentional homicide against a soldier who shot a boy named Allen. On May 16, both Houses of Parliament gave thanks to the Lord Mayor for suppressing the riots notwithstanding the civilian casualties sustained. A standing order enacted during the previous Parliament refusing admission to any spectators in the gallery of the House of Commons continued in force.

See Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, supra note 33, at 49–56; The Thanks of the Commons Given to the Lord Mayor of London for His Conduct During the Late Disturbances (May 16, 18, 1768), reprinted in William Cobbett, 16 Parliamentary History of England from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the Year 1803, 462–466 & n.* (1808); Joint Address of Thanks (May 10, 1768), reprinted in id. at 460, 461; Meeting of the New Parliament (May 10, 1768), reprinted in id. at 424, 424–28; Riot Act of 1715, 1 Geo. 1 stat. 2. c. 5.

On November 14, 1768, the House of Commons initiated expulsion proceedings against Wilkes for the second time and eventually succeeded in removing him on February 3 of the following year. Undaunted, Wilkes stood for reelection three more times—in February, March, and April—the so-called “Middlesex Election Affair of 1769.” Each time, the “working classes” of Middlesex championed their hero. Each time his enemies sought to void the result. Wilkes’ position was that since he submitted to criminal judgment, he should not be doubly punished for his prior conduct by losing his (new) seats as well. Those who took Wilkes’ side in the House also emphasized that expulsion for seditious libel was unprecedented. “Let him who has not sinned cast the first stone” was another sentiment presented in favor of Wilkes. If this new precedent was allowed, so the argument went, Parliament would slide down a slippery slope of constant dissolution on account of the improprieties of its members. “The arguments for his expulsion were founded on the badness of the man, and the impropriety of suffering such a one to be part of the legislature.”

Proceedings in the Commons on the Expulsion of Mr. Wilkes (Feb. 2, 1769), reprinted in William Cobbett, 16 Parliamentary History of England from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the Year 1803, 531, 545 (1808).

Wilkes’ supporters rioted once again, and on April 29, in response to the judgment of the House of Lords, submitted a petition for him to be readmitted to the Commons. Parliament considered the petition on May 8 but nevertheless resolved by a vote of 221 to 152 that Colonel Luttrell, Wilkes’ latest opponent, was duly elected. Though Wilkes’ gambit to sit in Parliament was initially frustrated, his political career survived. He sat in the House of Commons from 1774 to 1790, served as Lord Mayor of London from 1774 to 1775, and held the position of Chamberlain of the City of London from 1779 until his death in 1797. His crusade against general warrants, campaign for free speech, and rhetoric of liberty, confirm his place as one of the greatest demagogues of all time. He is, in my estimation, the first father of modern populism.

See Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, supra note 33, at 103; Proceedings in the Commons on Mr. Wilkes's Re-Election for Middlesex (Apr. 29, 1769; May 8, 1769), reprinted in William Cobbett, 16 Parliamentary History of England from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the Year 1803, 575, 588–89 (1808).

Akin to an old adage about the American Civil War, one could rightly ask whether the Gordon Riots were the last carnivalesque revolt, or the first industrial insurrection. The Gordon Riots are in fact the closest analogy to the Trump Riot and therefore require a more extensive discussion. The ostensible cause of the Gordon Riots was contempt for papal supremacy. The coals of religious tension between protestant and Catholic smoldered long after the fires of the English Civil War burned out. During the years when Protestants were in power, Parliament passed two statutes to thwart the spread of “Popery.” The Jesuits Act of 1584 dictated that any Roman Catholic priest that did not leave the Kingdom within forty days would be punished for high treason unless he swore an oath to obey Queen Elizabeth I.

An Act Against Jesuits, Seminary Priests, and Such Other Like Disobedient Persons of 1584, 27 Eliz. 1, c. 2.

The Papists Act of 1778 accomplished greater toleration by allowing Roman Catholics to serve in the military and purchase land if they swore an oath of allegiance. That legislation, however, unleashed widespread disapproval. The land was rife with anti-popery. A popular conspiracy even touted that there were twenty-thousand Jesuits hidden in underground tunnels by the Thames waiting for an order from the Holy See to flood the city of London in a manner reminiscent of the tactic used by Cyrus the Great to seize Babylon.

See Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1778, 18 Geo. III c. 60; Christopher Hibbert, King Mob: The Story of Lord George Gordon and the Riots of 1780, 20–21 (2004); Dana Rabin, Imperial Disruptions: City, Nation and Empire in the Gordon Riots, in The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain 93, 96 (Ian Haywood & John Seed eds., 2014); cf. Herodotus, The Histories 3.150–160 (Robert H. Strassler ed., Andrea L. Purvis trans. 2009) (484 – 425 B.C.).

He was a fanatic for the constitution and saw toleration as an existential threat to its existence. The Catholic question became his favorite cause, and so he formed the Protestant Association, an ecumenical arrangement of Anglican and dissenting middle class subjects, for the purposes of seeking the repeal of the Papists Act of 1778. He was brash and base. He insulted the King while pleading his aversion to Catholic toleration in a private audience. He insulted the courts. “The Judges,” he said, “are the mirrors by which the King's image is reflected.” His character was a foul portent of the degradations to come in a more decadent age.

Hibbert, supra note 53, at 20–21, 38; Dominic Green, George Gordon: A Biographical Reassessment, in The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain 245, 247–49, 256–57 (Ian Haywood & John Seed eds., 2014).

On June 2, 1780, Gordon marched at the head of a crowd 60,000 strong to Parliament to submit a formal petition to repeal the Papists Act of 1778. Philip Jennings Clerke, a bystander, later remarked that the crowd was composed of “The better sort of tradesmen; they were all well-dressed decent sort of people; I stopped in the fields and conversed with a great number of them; I asked them what was the occasion of their assembling? There was a great number of different parties, for I rode close by the side of the foot-path.”

King v. Lord George Gordon (1781), 21 Howell's St. Tr. 485, 578 (T.B. Howell ed. 1816) (emphasis added).

The Commons considered Gordon's petition but divided; when it came to a vote, the “Yeas” could not be counted because some of the mob gathered in the lobby to disturb the proceedings. The Serjeant-at-Arms informed the House that he could not lift the siege. Field Marshal Henry Seymour Conway grew irate with the ordeal and talked of drawing swords with the horde outside like the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae. “I am a military man and I shall protect the freedom of debate with my sword,” he said in a loud voice, “Do not imagine that we will be intimidated by a rabble. The entry into the House is a narrow one. Reflect that men of honour may defend this pass.”

As quoted in Hibbert, supra note 53, at 55–57.

On June 6, 1780, the Commons briefly reassembled and appointed a committee to inquire into the causes of the riot that penetrated the lobby. But the mob descended on Parliament once again and compelled the Commons to adjourn. “The phrase Read the Riot Act” originates form the requirement that magistrates in these times read the Riot Act of 1714 out loud. If the mob did not disperse within the hour its members were guilty of a felony punishable by death. The Riot Act was read in this instance but to no avail. The mob moved on to assault Newgate, Old Bailey, Clerkenwell, Bridewell, and the New Prison, and set their captives free. It sacked the home of William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench. The following day—“Black Wednesday”—the mob continued to destroy Roman Catholic businesses and residences, Fleet Prison, King's Bench Prison, the New Gaol, the Southwark and the Surrey Houses of Correction, and the Marshalsea debtor's prison. It was finally repulsed when it attempted to storm the Bank of England. To their credit, both Lord George Gordon and John Wilkes took up arms in defense of the Old Lady.

An Act for Preventing Tumults and Riotous Assemblies, and for the More Speedy and Effectual Punishing the Rioters of 1714, 1 Geo. 1, c. 5; Lord Gordon's Case, 37 H.C. Jo. 902–03 (June 6, 1780); George Rudé, The Gordon Riots: A Study of the Rioters and Their Victims: The Alexander Prize Essay, 6 Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 93, 96–98, 104–06 (1956).

On June 8, 1780, George III issued a proclamation that called in the army. Ten thousand troops swept clean the streets of London. Martial power restored civil order. The most common crimes committed by the rioters were destruction of movable objects and setting bonfires in the streets, not looting or theft. That is not to say that there was not a great loss of property. The damage inflicted on public buildings is estimated at £30,000. The cost to human life was even more tragic. The death toll stood at 458 civilians and 210 soldiers, with scores more maimed and wounded. There was a righteous demand for a reckoning. Yet some urged caution. The dialogue between Edmund Burke and Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford, resembled the tension between George Washington and Alexander Hamilton in handling the Whiskey Rebellion fourteen years later: the former feared inciting more violence by over-playing the government's hand; the latter desired to stamp out the fire of insurrection so that it should never light again.

See Lord George Gordon's Case, 37 H.C. Jo. 903–993 (June 8, 1780); Lord George Gordon's Case, 37 H.C. Jo. 903–910 (June 19, 1780); Matthew White, For the Safety of the City: The Geography and Social Politics of Public Execution After the Gordon Riots, in The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain 204, 218 (Ian Haywood & John Seed eds., 2014); The National Archives of the U.K., WO 34/103, f. 100 (June 7, 1780).

The Gordon Riots proceedings in the Old Bailey expressed a conservative reflex to purge disorder through discipline and punishment. Out of the 450 people who were arrested for riot-related crimes, 160 appeared for trial. Of those that appeared, sixty-two were given death sentences (though only twenty-five were ultimately hanged), twelve were given terms of imprisonment ranging from one month to five years, and one was privately whipped. Another eighty-five arrestees were found not guilty. The executions were cathartic. Carnaval revolte atoned through carnaval macabre—liturgical inhale and exhale for the masses.

See White, supra note 59, at 204, 208–10, 218; Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, supra note 33, at 98–100, 105–111.

On June 19, 1780, the Commons convened and was informed that the King would prosecute the Mad Scotchman for high treason. After being summoned to hear a royal address in the House of Lords, the Commons made a resolution in thanks. The Commons also drew up a formal response to King, thanking him again for the measures he implemented as “the Guardian of the Public Safety, […] in the Hour of extreme and imminent Necessity, for the immediate and effectual Suppression of those rebellious Insurrections.” Lord George Gordon's petition was overwhelmingly voted down. His jury ultimately found him not guilty of high treason, however, because the Crown could not satisfy its burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, in light of his speech and conduct, that he deliberately planned or intended the riots. Lord George Gordon's conduct, at any rate, was certainly contemptuous, though no contempt charges were brought against him or used as a predicate for impeachment or expulsion proceedings. One wonders if those were better remedies. The decision not to elect them was arguably more a political determination more than anything else.

Lord George Gordon's Case, 37 H.C. Jo. 903–910 (June 19, 1780); King v. Lord George Gordon, 21 St. Tr. 485, 647–48; Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, supra note 33, at 102.

The Gordon Riots were a powerful inflection point in British history. The real impetus, in my view, was not so much puritanical bigotry as plebeian ressentiment—it was the native lower and middling classes groping desire to settle accounts with cosmopolitan elites, to salve the sting of foreign-born workers, to protest imperial conflicts, to achieve, if only for a little while, social justice on their terms. The claim of John Stuart, 1st Marquess of Bute that the riots destroyed 35,000 Roman Catholic homes, however, is a myth. The Roman Catholic neighborhoods that suffered the most, Moorfields and Spitalfields, were Irish migrant enclaves to be sure. But Irish day-laborers competed with natives for work by accepting lower wages. These neighborhoods were derided as “Dens of Popery,” but that derision was arguably another example of trade lobbying by other means. An Irish-Catholic merchant named Malo, for example, employed over a thousand men in workshops in a part of Moorfields near Finsbury yard, was a Roman Catholic, and was always eager to employ fellows from the Emerald Isle. The rioters plausibly targeted him more for his payroll than his rosary beads.

Cf. Hibbert, supra note 53, at 66–68; Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, supra note 33, at 108–113. But see M. Dorothy George, London Life in the 18th Century 118–19 (1965) (indicating that anti-Catholic prejudice was still an important factor).

Sometimes a pinch of humor could dispel a rioter's rage. A mob raised its fists, cried the refrain of “No Popery,” and prepared to assault the home of an Italian entertainer named Grimaldi for refusing to respond in kind. But the performer cleverly put his head out of the second story window, made comical grimaces, and screamed “Genteelmen in dis hose dere be no religion at all!” The mob laughed, gave him three cheers, and moved on to the next victim. That episode nearly says it all so far as the true religious “convictions” of the rioters were concerned.

See Hibbert, supra note 53, at 66–68, 97–98, 106, 135, 122, 139–40; Rabin, supra note 53, at 106–07; Lord George Gordon's Case, 37 H.C. Jo. 903–910 (June 19, 1780); Rudé, supra note 58, at 98–100, 105–111; Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, supra note 33, at, at 12.

King Mob exploited other tribal differences, but often for similarly base motives that had nothing to do with theology. Jews scrawled “This house is a true Protestant” on their doors so that the Spirit of Democracy would pass overhead without inflicting punishment. King Mob made his rounds through the city with the efficiency of a slum lord well versed in the art of calling to collect. Christopher Hibbert recounts that rioters left notes on the doors of each home he visited for future reference: O—meant the “contribution” was poor; Ŏ—meant a “contribution” was refused so the house should be destroyed; ✓—meant the “contribution” was so generous a second loot might be worthwhile; and ⊙⊙ meant that there was a woman in the house. King Mob was therefore apparently rapacious in more ways than one.

See Hibbert, supra note 53, at 122.

The Protestant Association was, by and large, a body made up of people belonging to the working classes, and, like so many associations similarly composed, suffered from bad leadership, lost sight of its core values, and allowed baser elements to corrupt its energy into a maelstrom of destruction. E.P. Thompson broke down the petition march into three phases encompassing a process of cascading degradation from a revolutionary crowd consisting of well-behaved tradesmen—to a mob reminiscent of the Wilkite era engaged in “licensed spontaneity”—to an unprecedented and unlicensed insurrection beyond the pale of even what eighteenth century standards would tolerate in terms of “activism by other means.”

See Thompson, supra note 25, at 71–72.

There is a difference of opinion among the historians of the period about the extent to which the insurrectionary phase of the petition was the fault of members of the working classes vis-à-vis members of the London criminal underbelly. E.P. Thompson correctly characterizes that difference as depending upon the source of information given primacy. George Rudé gives priority to criminal records yielding statistical evidence that the rioters were indeed members of the working classes, therefore, this was an insurrection of “sober workmen.” Christopher Hibbert and J. Paul Castro emphasize eyewitness accounts and anecdotal evidence indicating that the insurrectionaries were lowlifes, thugs, criminals, and prostitutes. Both sources are imperfect. The criminal data from that time is limited, incomplete, and not necessarily representative. Anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts notoriously have their own problems: prejudice, issues with recollection, etc. The exact composition of the rioters is impossible to tell, but from my viewpoint, the evidence of their criminal character is overwhelming—to the extent tradesmen were involved, it seems that they were the converse of the kind observed in the initial march of the Protestant Association—tradesmen of the “lesser sort.”

See generally, e.g., J. Paul de Castro, The Gordon Riots 144–46, 178, 242–43 (1926); Thompson, supra note 25, at 71–72 & n.2; Hibbert, supra note 53, at 45–46, 106; Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty, supra note 33, at 93, 95–96, 104–06; Rudé, supra note 58, at 118–19.

The disaffection of the rioters for the British Empire put symbols of nationalism like the Bank of England right in their crosshairs. Just as the Irish day-laborers of Moorfields and Spitalfields were not necessarily targeted for their Roman Catholicism as such, but as a symbol of economic competition, the Roman Catholic Church itself was an institutional target not simply on its own terms, but for its association with the wild exploits of John Bull. The motives for tolerance bills were not pure; they were designed to swell the ranks of armies engaged in conflicts in North America and elsewhere, wars that the middling and lower classes simply did not want. Many detested Britain's services as a “nurse of liberty throughout the world” and the cultural feedback that colonial émigrés and colonized peoples returned to the homeland.

See Rabin, supra note 53, at 94–97.

I take the view that the Gordon Riots manifested populist and nationalist elements simultaneously. The sentiments of “Don’t tread on me” and “My nation first” often run together. This is because populism and nationalism are, in my view, paradoxically intertwined, not dichotomous. As Dana Rabin persuasively demonstrated in her work on the Gordon Riots, nationalism and imperialism are cosmopolitan forces. Empire was made by the elite, for the elite. Yet the incidental effect of empire was to introduce demographic change through conquest, colonization, and commerce. Cosmopolitan chauvinism was, ironically, a force for diversity and inclusion. The law of nature is that great nations, like great heat, expand. Populists wanted their nation to be great; yet they desired to conserve its identity by consolidating its culture and retracting its foreign entanglements. Horace Walpole recognized the costs of empire were not merely economic or martial, but also cultural and constitutional.

As discussed in id. at 97.

In the final analysis, neither the Protestant Association nor Protestantism as a whole can be blamed. The riot was not the work of the nucleus of the petition movement. Perhaps the most striking fact of this whole episode is that out of the 44,000 signatories to Lord George Gordon petition, not a single one was arrested, let alone tried and convicted, for any crime related to the riots. There is no evidence of a coordinated plan of action from any source, George Rudé concluded, such as that imagined by Charles Dickens in Barnaby Rudge. What the rioters had in common was not that they were of one faith or one color, but that they were not elite. The shepherds in the ranks occupied “pulpits of the lower sort;” the sheep of a Protestant persuasion were “chiefly Methodists and bigoted Calvinists of the lower ranks of life.”

See Mark Knights, The 1780 Protestant Petitions and the Culture of Petitioning, in The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain 46, 52, 55 (Ian Haywood & John Seed eds., 2014); John Seed, The Fall of Romish Babylon Anticipated: Plebeian Dissenters and Anti-Popery in the Gordon Riots, in The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain 69, 69–70 (Ian Haywood & John Seed eds., 2014); Rudé, supra note 58, at 102.

Let it not be supposed that what transpired was squarely the fault of the Tories or the Whigs. Neither the leaders of the government nor the opposition were swayed by Lord George Gordon. Consider the example of Edmund Burke, that venerable champion of conservatism, who put an end to his own friendly relations with the “Mad Scotchman.” Lord Gordon himself wrote that Burke “never once shewed the smallest sign of that acquaintance or familiarity which had formerly subsisted between us for some years.’” Like any decent student of the classical tradition, Burke recognized that the end of friendship was virtue, not loyalty. When it became apparent that the word “virtue” could never again be associated with Lord Gordon or his legacy, Burke terminated the relationship, and in doing so gave posterity a marvelous lesson in character: Do not indulge the pretender, the pied piper, or the petty tyrant, even for an instant, no matter the temporal gain.

See Hibbert, supra note 53, at 51; cf. Frederich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: On the Prejudices of Philosophers 30 (1989) (1886); Marcus Tullius Cicero, Laelius: On Friendship 5.19, 187 (Michael Grant trans., 1971) (44 B.C.); Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1101b13–20, 1165b10–20 (David Ross trans., Lesley Brown ed., 2009) (c. 340 B.C.).

We might wonder why the Gordon Riots did not send St. James's Palace into a death spiral as the French Revolution did for Versailles. Britain supposedly had a proletariat too, after all, didn’t it? The answer, funnily enough, might be that Britain had better elites. The dexterity of the British Constitution and the character of its best men, though far from perfect, navigated the crisis to a swift resolution. The casualties inflicted by the army could have been far higher if the troops had not been so hesitant to fire on civilians. Even in the heat of the greatest terror to antagonize London since the Great Fire of 1666, leading statesmen kept an ever-watchful eye on the civil liberties of their fellow subjects. Burke urged against “establishing a military on the ruins of the civil government,” for the London he saw filled with troops looked more like “Paris, Berlin or Petersburg then the capital of government by law.” The Anglo-Saxon political sensibility suffered neither the stamping Prussian jackboot nor the Napoleonic whiff of grapeshot. In insurrections as in government, Great Britain was more moderate than Europe.

See Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France 45, 87, 105 (2009) (1790); Hibbert, supra note 53, at 55–57, 74, 97–98, 100–05.

The Trump Riot provides an excellent illustration of the fact that even distinguished veterans are capable of perfidious behavior. The same was true at the birth of the Republic. On December 14, 1782, George Washington informed Joseph Jones by letter that “the temper of the Army is much soured, and has become more irritable than at any period since the commencement of the War.”

George Washington, Letter to Joseph Jones (Dec. 14, 1782), reprinted in George Washington: Writings 478–79 (John Rhodehamel ed., Library of America, 1997).

The mutineers bivouacked in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Both Congress and the Supreme Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania were located in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania State House, a building that later came to be known as Independence Hall. The serpent of disorder slithered their way, but Congress was helpless because it had no direct control over the military under the Articles of Confederation. It was entirely dependent on state militias for protection. No militia was on call to quickly suppress the threat. Delegate John Dickinson (Pennsylvania) explained that “without some outrages on persons or property, the militia could not be relied on.

See U.S. Art. Confed. art. VII, IX; 5 Elliot's Debates 93–94 (June 21, 1783).

Eighty armed mutineers arrived in Philadelphia on the night of June 20 and merged with local soldiers stationed at the city barracks. The mob, now totaling around 500 men, surrounded the State House the next day, and blocked the door, preventing the members of the Congress of Confederation from leaving. The situation brought a new meaning to the term “House arrest.” Although they demonstrated no initial willingness to engage in violence, the mob uttered offensive language, recklessly pointed their muskets at the windows, and drank to “hasty excesses” from nearby “tippling houses.” Bayonets were fixed. Moods were hot. The mob sent a note to the session, demanding that Congress appoint officers to represent their grievances since the mutineers’ own officers had strong enough mettle to avoid the ruckus.

25 Cont. Cong. Jo. 973 (June 21, 1783); 20 Letters of Delegates to Congress 349–350 (June 21, 1783).

Constance McLaughlin Green downplays the danger of the mutiny in her classic history of the capital.

See Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: A History of the Capital: 1800 – 1950, 10–11 (1962).

On June 21, Oliver Ellsworth (Connecticut) and Alexander Hamilton conferred with the Supreme Executive Council. Congress reported to the Council “[t]hat though they had declined a specification of the measures which they would deem effectual, it was their sense, that a number of the militia should be immediately called out, sufficient to suppress the revolt.” The Council's reply was infuriating. The local militia was unwilling to intervene until someone was shot or the State House was torched. These militia were fellow Pennsylvanians. They were no more disposed to fire on their own countrymen than the British regulars were in the Gordon Riots three years earlier. The glory of relieving the legislators from their misery instead fell to Cincinnatus.

See Kenneth R. Bowling, New Light on the Philadelphia Mutiny of 1783: Federal-State Confrontation at the Close of the War for Independence, 101 The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 419, 443–46 (1977); 25 Cont. Cong. Jo. 973–74 (June 21, 1783); 20 Letters of Delegates to Congress 350–52 (June 21, 1783).

Upon receiving word of the mutiny on June 24, President George Washington dispatched 1,500 soldiers under the command of Generals William Heath and Robert Howe. Hamilton proposed that this force assume a constabulary role—to discover, disarm, and detain anyone who participated in the mutiny. The mutiny actually disbanded before the troops arrived. This was in part because Congress managed to remove itself (with indignation) to Princeton, New Jersey. The removal succeeded for two reasons. First, Benjamin Rush, a fellow Pennsylvanian, skillfully negotiated with the mutineers about their grievances. Second, the storm ran its course. The mutineers had enough and went home. The troops sent by President Washington were discharged on August 21.

24 Cont. Cong. Jo. 517–18 & n. 1 (Aug. 21, 1783); 24 Cont. Cong. Jo. 411–21 (July 1, 1783); 24 Cont. Cong. Jo. 411 & n.1 (June 30, 1783); Bowling, supra note 101, at 443–46.

The Council maintained that it was just as dishonored as Congress. But that was not true.

24 Cont. Cong. Jo. 423–33 (July 15, 1783); 24 Cont. Cong. Jo. 425 (July 4, 1783); 24 Cont. Cong. Jo. 423–25 (July 2, 1783).

Although the offenses committed by the mutineers were prosecuted under military justice, not civil justice or any inherent authority of the Confederation Congress, I believe they were in the genre of contempt and proper crimes at common law. Hamilton was livid with Pennsylvania's “weak and disgusting position,” during the mutiny. “New governments emerging out of a revolution, are naturally deficient in authority,” he later reflected, “This observation applies with peculiar force to the government of the union; the constitutional imbecility of which must be apparent to every man of reflection.”

See Alexander Hamilton, Nat’l Arch. Defense of Congress, Founders Online (July 1783), https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-03-02-0273, derived from III The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (Harold C. Syrett ed. 1962 (1782–1786)).

The trauma of the Philadelphia Mutiny moved Congress to explore a deeper question: How could it better protect itself from riots, tumults, and insurrections in the future? It appointed a committee to consider defining a jurisdiction where the national legislature could reside, and thereby exercise full control over its own security.

24 Cont. Cong. Jo. 428 & n.1 (July 8, 1783).

The next major episode occurred at the peak of the Anti-Mason movement. It all started in 1826, when one William Morgan, a printer from Batavia, New York, published a piece attacking the Free-Masons and then disappeared. The public raised its eyebrows. Did the Masonic Order kidnap Morgan, or worse? The incident stirred up public suspicions. At the turn of the century, there were eleven grand Masonic lodges and 16,000 members across the country. The Freemasons were indeed a powerful organization, with important connections in politics and the press.

See generally Formisano, supra note 24, at 96–99, 137.

Over the next five years, legal proceedings related to Morgan's disappearance resulted in several indictments. These proceedings were tainted by the fact that Masonic witnesses refused to appear; moreover, several jurors and judges in these cases were Masons themselves. It came to light that the Masons did indeed abduct Morgan and (probably) murdered him. The public also learned that Eli Bruce, Sheriff for Niagara County, New York, was a Mason and not only participated in the abduction, but packed juries to frustrate its investigation and prosecution. Bruce and two others were ultimately convicted of kidnapping in 1828.

Id. at 137.

The Morgan affair inflamed the anxiety of constituencies around the country. The Masons were widely perceived to be a danger to the American family because of their machinations to suppress public criticism, their grip on positions of power and influence, their exclusion of women, and their reputation for intemperance. As a result, a faction known as the “Anti-Masons” formed on planks that appealed to many voters among the working classes: an evangelical perspective on family values, temperance, and theological orthodoxy, plus a contempt for Masonic-Democratic elites.

Id. at 118–19, 125–26.

Anti-Mason fervor, the “Blessed Spirit,” found a warm political reception in the Keystone State. The Pennsylvania House of Representatives began investigating the Masonic order across the state in 1835. Anti-Masonic candidate Joseph Ritner was elected Governor. His “humble farmer” image and antipathy for Masonic domination of elite public offices were agreeable to populist sentiments animating the electorate. Pennsylvania adopted a new constitution in 1838 curbing the Governor's appointment power by, among other things, requiring the Senate to confirm judicial nominations. Ritner was re-nominated that same year and supported by a coalition of the Whigs and Anti-Masons. The Democrats put up a desperate fight. The final tally showed that the Democratic candidate, David R. Porter, was the winner by a mere 5,540 votes. The Blessed Spirit was reduced but not retired.

Id. at 131–32; William Henry Egle & Joseph Ritner, The Buckshot, 23 Pa. Mag. Hist & Bio. 137, 137–143 (1899); Roy H. Akagi, The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1838, 48 Pa. Mag. Hist. & Bio. 301, 332 (1924).

The struggle for the executive was finished. But the struggle for the legislature had just begun. The Fall election of 1838 for the Pennsylvania General Assembly was tight. The Democrats and Whig/Anti-Mason coalition contested eight seats in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. The Whig/Anti-Mason coalition needed those seats to win a majority in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. They already won a majority in the Senate. Those seats therefore not only represented control of the General Assembly, but possession of a seat in the United States Senate for their faction as well. During the course of those contested elections, the Democrats threw out all the votes from the Northern Liberties precinct of Philadelphia, a working-class district, on the grounds of election fraud.

Egle & Ritner, supra note 112, at 137–143.

On December 4, 1838, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives came to order. There were one hundred representatives. The Democrats held forty-eight seats in other quarters besides the eight contested in Philadelphia. The Anti-Masons and Whigs held forty-four seats. The contest for the eight seats from Philadelphia prevented the constitution of a lawful quorum, a condition precedent for electing a Speaker of the House. Both factions were so incensed by each other that they began electing their own Speakers on an independent basis. The Whigs and Anti-Masons elected Thomas S. Cunningham (Beaver County) as their Speaker. The Democrats elected William Hopkins (Washington County) as theirs. This was a terrible development. A servant cannot obey two masters, let alone a house full of public servants.

See Egle & Ritner, supra note 112, at 143–46.

The rancor in the Pennsylvania Senate was even worse. The lobbies in the rear of the upper chamber began to fill with the mob of “concerned citizens” that trained in from Philadelphia. Charles B. Penrose (Anti-Mason, Philadelphia) presided as Speaker. Two members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives were present on the floor of the Senate at that time: Thaddeus Stevens (Anti-Mason, Adams County) and Thomas H. Burrowes (Anti-Mason, Lancaster County). Representative Burrowes also served as the Secretary of the Commonwealth; in the past he served on the Anti-Mason State Committee as well. He was given the task of reading the returns for the contested elections.

Id. at 146; About the Buckshot War, N.Y. Times. (Dec. 18, 1887).

Senator Charles Brown (Anti-Mason, Philadelphia) interrupted Burrowes, protested that one of the returns was false, and presented a substitute document that he claimed was the “true” return. This created an uproar in the gallery. “The scene now became one of fearful confusion, disorder, and terror. . . .”

Egle & Ritner, supra note 112, at 143–46.

Men who constructed and maintained public works supported by the Governor's policy, like canals and railroads, seized the state arsenal in anticipation of a fight on behalf of their patron. William Cochran, Sheriff of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, issued a counter-proclamation, asserting that there was no disorder and that the Governor's proclamation was unnecessary. The next day, Governor Ritner ordered Major-General Robert Patterson of the First Division of the Pennsylvania Militia based in Philadelphia to “call out from your command force sufficient to quell this insurrection and march them immediately to the seat of government.”

Id. at 149–150.

Governor Ritner appealed to President Martin Van Buren for aid. He contended that the federal government had an obligation to support him because several federal officers lead the insurrection. President Van Buren did not bother to respond personally; rather, he elected the Secretary of War, Joel R. Poinsett, to serve as his mouthpiece. The message was eerily reminiscent of the Pennsylvanian Council's response to the Congress of the Confederation during the mutiny of 1783: There would be no intervention unless it became impossible for the Pennsylvania legislature to reconvene. A dark irony of history indeed. One can imagine Hamilton turning over in his grave. Unsatisfied, Governor Ritner requisitioned Major-General Alexander of the Eleventh Division of the Pennsylvania State Militia, to support him. General Alexander, a staunch Whig, marched out on December 15 and joined the First Division in Harrisburg.

Compare Egle & Ritner, supra note 112, at 152–54, and About the Buckshot War, N.Y. Times (Dec. 18, 1887), with Alexander Hamilton, Nat’l Arch. Defense of Congress, Founders Online (July 1783), https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-03-02-0273, derived from III The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (Harold C. Syrett ed. 1962 (1782–1786).

There was no additional violence or insurrectionary activity following the riot on December 4. The only martial arrest, ironically, seems to have stemmed from military rather than civilian sources. The state militias only compounded the political strain rather than relieving it. The city received an influx of soldiers with nothing to do, no enemy to fight. King Mob was nowhere in sight. So, the bored troops enjoyed their time in Harrisburg as “a mere frolic.” The deadlock in the state legislature was eventually broken by compromise. On December 17, three lawfully elected Whig Representatives from Union County defected from the Anti-Masons and joined “Hopkins’ House.” On December 27, a resolution was passed 17 to 16 in the Senate recognizing that this advantage of three votes gave the Democrats a quorum, rendering the House properly constituted and ready to proceed with business. Both Houses reconciled. David R. Porter was officially declared the lawfully elected Governor.

See Egle & Ritner, supra note 112, at 153–54.

The riot of December 4, in my view, constituted a direct contempt of the Pennsylvania legislature because it occurred on the grounds of the State House itself. The mob in the gallery and the lobbies of the Pennsylvania Senate certainly committed direct contempt of that House by suspending election proceedings and driving public servants out of the windows. Some of the ruffians committed offenses that could be prosecuted by the Pennsylvania executive at common law as well. The federal government could have anticipated and planned for the eventuality of a similar disturbance at the Capitol. But alas, Congress ignored the cry of Pennsylvania, the perennial canary in the coal mine of political unrest. The Buckshot War is nevertheless helpful towards informing the posture of Congress towards direct assaults and interferences with its elections. Although the Buckshot War was not an instance of contempt of Congress per se, it naturally informs congressional posture, mutatis mutandis, towards direct contempts of its own prerogatives.

Cf. Case of the Tumultuous Crowd, 22 H.C. Jo. 115–116 (Apr. 12, 1733).

The Age of Jackson was named for one of, if not the greatest, populist personages in American history. In word, President Andrew Jackson took political opposition personally and always wore his heart on his sleeve. In deed, however, President Jackson never directly incited mob violence. He actively suppressed riots of every kind during his tenure, perhaps better than any president before the Civil War. It was the incidental effect of President Jackson's fiery words and brash actions that gave him the veneer of a rabble-rousing kingpin. “[T]he central charge of the Whigs by 1835,” David Grimsted recounts, “was that ‘King Andrew,’ very like that of ‘King Mob,’ was ‘marked by violence, obstinacy, and daring disregard’ for any legal restraints on ‘his violent impulses.’” These tendencies were well on display throughout his administration.

See Grimsted, supra note 114, at 5–7.

The issue at the heart of the so-called Bank War, which defined the Age of Jackson, was whether the Second Bank of the United States should be dissolved. The national bank was the darling of Alexander Hamilton, the nationalist of his generation. The national republican wing of the Whig Party—an indirect successor to Federalist ideology—long supported the national bank because it was their favored mechanism for financing infrastructure and promoting economic growth. Democratic resistance to the national bank did not, however, qualify this partisan divide as a straightforward clash between nationalist and populist sensibilities. There was division within the Democratic party about the propriety of a national bank. Moreover, the Bank War intersected with other axes of political conflict—the tension, for example, between the money power in the East and the debtor class in the West.

See Fed. Res. Bank of Phila., The First Bank of the United States: A Chapter in the History of Central Banking 2–4 (2015); Harry N. Scheiber, Some Documents on Jackson's Bank War, 30 Penn. History: A J. of Mid-Atl. Studies 46, 48–52 (1963); George Frederick Mellen, Some Documents on Jackon's Bank War, 10 The Sewanee Review 56, 63–67 (1902).

The death blow to the national bank, ironically enough, was delivered neither by Jackson, nor any other Democrat, but rather by a politician who ran on the Whig ticket for the office of President of the United States: John Tyler.

John Tyler, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Tyler (last updated Jan. 14, 2021).

The capital up until this point was relatively peaceful. There were rowdy children and some gang activity by fire companies stationed around the district. The authorities were helpless to deal with these issues, however, because there was no municipal police force, only part-time ward constables who rarely patrolled at night. The city was about to pay the price for its threadbare security.

See Green, supra note 97, at 159–60.

On August 25, 1841, Mayor Seaton submitted a letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives declaring his regret and indignation over a riot that took place the week prior. He expressed “the anxious wish of the people of Washington that an efficient and vigorous police be established in the city, under the Authority of the Government of the United States.”

36 H.R. Jo. 412 (Aug. 25, 1841).

Congress did not take proactive steps after this incident to protect itself from riots in particular. The riot did motivate Congress, however, to pass legislation promoting the better policing of the District of Columbia as a whole. On May 20, 1842, the House Committee for the District of Columbia reported H.R. No. 468, entitled “An Act to Establish a Police for the Protection of Public and Private Property in the City of Washington, and for Other Purposes.” The bill authorized the establishment of an auxiliary police force. The force initially consisted of one captain and one lieutenant appointed by the President, and thirty men, including five sergeants, to be appointed by the United States Marshall for the District of Columbia. Its purpose was to serve as a night watch. The bill was amended to give the Mayor of the capital the authority to appoint the captain and his subordinates due to concerns that the force would otherwise become a “presidential ‘praetorian guard.’”

Bills and Resolutions, 27th Cong., H.R., 2nd Session, H.R. No. 468 (May 20, 1842).

The Bank Riot is not a congressional contempt precedent per se. There was no direct contempt in the form of a mob, riot, or insurrection committed against Congress itself. It is, however, a meaningful case study representing the possibility of political violence in one quarter of the capital spilling over onto Capitol grounds. Mobs in other places in the city can make their way to the Capitol itself even if the Capitol is not their premeditated target. In the case of insurrections transpiring over the course of several days or weeks, this is especially true, as illustrated by the Gordon Riots. This case is also a meaningful precedent in the annals of congressional efforts to better police the District of Columbia that vicariously impact its capacity for protecting the Capitol and quelling any disorders that arise there.

Cf. Case of the Tumultuous Crowd, 22 H.C. Jo. 115–116 (Apr. 12, 1733).