uity of the custom is shown by the origin of the expression, the Anglo-
Normanhu-e-cri—every nearby person was obliged to respond. When
malefactors were caught in the act, a mob or posse—from the even older
Latin phrase posse comitatus—was immediately called into being. Those
who refused to help run down the suspect became liable. The person the
posse caught was often summarily punished; otherwise, he was turned over
to a legal system manned by appointed or elected colonials. While these
officials theoretically administered English law, they did so in ways that
reflected local social and religious custom and popular opinion. They
were, in short, another but less material manifestation of the ceiling in the
colonial house I described earlier,almostbutnot quiteEnglish.
If the officials were not vigorous enough, mobs often took the law into
their hands. For example, when the spread of prostitution infuriated the
straight-laced inhabitants of Boston, mobs rose to destroy the whorehouses
and to enforce bans on unseemly conduct by prostitutes. They did this
time after time, in 1734, 1737, and 1771. Again, concerned by threats of
famine, Boston mobs rose in 1710, 1713, and 1729 to prevent food from
being exported from the colony. And, frightened by an epidemic of small-
pox, inhabitants of a number of towns and villages similarly took control of
measures of public health in the 1770s. One riot in 1747 lasted three days;
it and another in 1764 aimed to stop the Royal Navy from impressing local
sailors. Mobs in Philadelphia and other cities similarly rioted over local
infringements of what they considered right and proper.
Because the British did not prevent such popular action and allowed or
encouraged the colonists to develop and man their own legal system,
elected colonial officials became conscious of their power—and, equally
important, of their right to act in matters of public interest. By the decade
before the Revolution, they had acquired a status, even admitted by the
British, that enabled them to exercise a veto over British decrees and to
control royal and even military officials. One reason they could do this was
that there were so many of them. Each generation brought over a new com-
plement of indentured servants who swelled the ranks of the soon-to-be
American public.
Early on, the colonists realized, as John Pory wrote from Virginia in
1619, that “our principall wealth...consisteth in servants.” That remained
The Growth of the Colonies 159