have on politics; they are rules of common law, the law of the land;
and it is certainly true, that wherever there is an unlawful
assembly, let it consist of many persons or of a few, every man in
it is guilty of every unlawful act committed by any one of the whole
party, be they more or be they less, in pursuance of their unlawful
design. This is the policy of the law; to discourage and prevent
riots, insurrections, turbulence, and tumults.

In the continual vicissitudes of human things, amidst the shocks of
fortune and the whirls of passion that take place at certain
critical seasons, even in the mildest government, the people are
liable to run into riots and tumults. There are Church-quakes and
State-quakes in the moral and political world, as well as
earthquakes, storms, and tempests in the physical. Thus much,
however, must be said in favor of the people and of human nature,
that it is a general, if not a universal truth, that the aptitude of
the people to mutinies, seditions, tumults, and insurrections, is in
direct proportion to the despotism of the government. In
governments completely despotic,--that is, where the will of one
man is the only law, this disposition is most prevalent. In
aristocracies next; in mixed monarchies, less than either of the
former; in complete republics the least of all, and under the same
form of governments as in a limited monarchy, for example, the
virtue and wisdom of the administrations may generally be measured
by the peace and order that are seen among the people. However this
may be, such is the imperfection of all things in this world, that
no form of government, and perhaps no virtue or wisdom in the
administration, can at all times avoid riots and disorders among the
people.