Founding Fathers’ Fear of Tyranny of Majority and Mob Rule
A mob is defined as an emotionally charged crowd of people whose members engage in violence directed at a specific target. This phenomenon or “social behavior” spontaneously forms in society all the time. In one of the first books about societal behavior titled The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895), a French philosopher, Gustave Le Bon, illustrates the typical mentality of the mob and made the following observation:
The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Mobs can be small in size and duration as in the Salem Witch Trials or enormous and long lasting as during Stalin’s Soviet Union or Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The town of Salem, Massachusetts, was the location of a notable historical event when, in 1694, 19 men and women died at the hands of the mob. When these mobs are unified in idea and purpose and gain enough prominence as they did in 20th century Europe, they form governments which can inevitably lead to the death of millions of people. It is important for us to examine how mobs can evolve into governments and how this abhorrent form of government can be avoided. As evidenced by John Madison’s notes which he wrote during the Second Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787, it is clear that our founding fathers were deeply apprehensive about pure democracy, which is basically mob rule.
When drafting the Constitution which created our republican form of government, the founders made certain that the “mob” was given as little direct control of the federal government as possible, as they sought to insulate the federal government from the passions of the mob. The closest to pure democracy (mob rule) at the federal level in the United States is the House of Representatives. The members of the House are elected directly by the people – the mob. Originally and prior to the 17th amendment, Senators were elected by the various state legislatures and given six-year terms rather than two-year terms as in the House. In presidential elections, voters do not actually vote for the presidential candidate but electors (the electoral college) who will eventually go to Congress and elect the chief executive. Supreme Court Justices with lifetime appointments, in part in order for the Justices to be immune to the passions of the mob, are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. As evidenced in Madison’s notes from the constitutional convention, it is clear that these layers of government were intentionally created in order to insulate the federal government from pure democracy – mob rule.
So, what did founding fathers think of the mobs that occasionally formed during the time of great social change prior to the Revolution? It is an important question and may be able to shed some light on how we should view the mobs that still form in our society today. Although some people in our society seem to think that they are more sophisticated and more modern than our ancestors some 250 years ago, it is evident that neither society nor the people within it has changed their opinion too much in its interpretations of mobs which form in times of social change.
In search of some answers related to the thoughts of the founding fathers on the mob, the National Archives online database titled “Correspondence and Other Writings of Seven Major Shapers of the United States” is fruitful. “George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. Over 185,000 searchable documents, fully annotated, from the authoritative Founding Fathers Papers projects.” This database did not disappoint. There are links to 691 documents containing the word “mob.” Benjamin Franklin prominently wrote about the mobs in colonial America.
In addition to evidencing Franklin’s humor of which many historians are quite fond, reading Franklin’s thoughts on the mob is highly instructive. Franklin was supportive of social change coming from the common man of society when Franklin wrote to George Whitefield on July 6, 1749. Whitefield was a prominent Anglican minister who traveled many times to the English colonies and preached often. He is known as one of the great preachers during the Great Awakening, which precipitated some of the American mindset that would become the underpinnings of the Revolution. To Whitefield, Frankin cited Confucius for the proposition that preaching the cause of virtue to the upper levels of society would also infect the lower levels of society over time. Franklin commented to Whitefield that in the colonies, Franklin had the opposite experience and that the elites in society are also influenced by the trends in the common masses. Franklin humorously quips to Whitefield, “The mode has a wonderful influence on mankind; and there are numbers that perhaps fear less the being in Hell, than out of the fashion.”
Almost 15 years later when the common masses were scalping people and even killing them out of frustration with the Crown or as a result of instigation prior to the Revolution, Franklin was displeased with the ignorant masses and referred to them, in poignant language which was uncharacteristic of the time, as murderers. In his “Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of Our Public Affairs in a Letter to a Friend in the Country” dated April 12, 1764, Franklin posits to a friend that Pennsylvania, which was still a proprietary government at the time, would be better off if it was taken over by the Crown. Regarding mobs which were forming in Pennsylvania at the time and killing innocent people, Franklin wrote:
At present we are in a wretched Situation. The Government that ought to keep all in Order, is itself weak, and has scarce Authority enough to keep the common Peace. Mobs assemble and kill (we scarce dare say murder) Numbers of innocent People in cold Blood, who were under the Protection of the Government. Proclamations are issued to bring the Rioters to Justice. Those Proclamations are treated with the utmost Indignity and Contempt. Not a Magistrate dares wag a Finger towards discovering or apprehending the Delinquents, (we must not call them Murderers). They assemble again, and with Arms in their Hands, approach the Capital.
In his “Cool Thoughts” letter, Franklin is likely referring to the death of indigenous people at the hands of the Paxton Boys. The Paxton Boys were a group of primarily Ulster Irish who, in violation of treaties, illegally squatted on indigenous land. After killing six Susquehannock in December of 1763, the Paxton Boys marched on Philadelphia a couple months later and terrorized the community until Franklin, who had raised troops to put down the Paxton Boys, regained control of the city. Franklin’s “Cool Thoughts” letter was written only a couple of months after these unfortunate events.
James Madison also wrote about factions in Federalist 10 under the pseudonym Publius. Madison defined the word “faction” as “a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” In what appears to foreshadow the governments of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in the 20th century, Madison argues that, in order to cure “the mischiefs of faction,” government could either remove the causes of faction by destroying liberty or “giving to every citizen the same opinions.” Madison continues that both choices are unwise, as liberty is the foundation of political life and, so “long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.” Madison argues, “A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.” Madison concludes that republican government guards “against the cabals of a few; and that, however large it may be, they must be limited to a certain number, in order to guard against the confusion of a multitude.”
The founding fathers were aware of possible destruction at the hands of mobs during times of great social change. Despite these warnings, there are some factions in our American society today that seek to erode the guardrails against factions which our founding fathers enshrined with good reason in the Constitution. Before diluting the protections against tyranny of the majority by fundamentally changing provisions of the Constitution, we must be cognizant of the reasons for the creation of the constitutional provisions in the first place. Such cognition ultimately warns against allowing the mob close to the levers of government.
