It has been asked why Lovejoy and his friends did not
appeal to the executive--trust their defence to the police of the city?
It has been hinted that, from hasty and ill-judged excitement, the men
within the building provoked a quarrel, and that he fell in the course
of it, one mob resisting another. Recollect, sir, that they did act with
the approbation and sanction of the Mayor. In strict truth, there was
no executive to appeal to for protection. The Mayor acknowledged that
he could not protect them. They asked him if it was lawful for them to
defend themselves. He told them it was, and sanctioned their assembling
in arms to do so. They were not, then, a mob; they were not merely
citizens defending their own property; they were in some sense the
_posse comitatus_, adopted for the occasion into the police of the city,
acting under the order of a magistrate. It was civil authority resisting
lawless violence. Where, then, was the imprudence? Is the doctrine to
be sustained here that it is imprudent for men to aid magistrates in
executing the laws?
Men are continually asking each other, Had Lovejoy a right to resist?
Sir, I protest against the question instead of answering it.
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