HARPER'S WEEKLY.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 1863.
THE RIOTS.
WHEN we wrote last week the New York riots had but just commenced, and there was some doubt how far they might extend and where they might culminate. They are now, to all outward appearance, substantially over. We see no reason, however, to alter the opinions expressed in our last issue. The
It is important that this riot should teach us something more useful than a revival of Know-Nothing prejudices. We ought to learn from it —what we should have known before, but communities like individuals learn nothing except from experience—that riots are the natural and inevitable diseases of great cities, epidemics, like small-pox and cholera, which must be treated scientifically, upon logical principles, and with the light of large experience. In old cities where the authorities know how to treat riots, and resort at once to grape and canister, they never occur twice in a generation, one lesson being sufficient for the most hot-blooded rioter; in other places, where less vigorous counsels prevail, the disease is checked and covered up for a time, but breaks out afresh at intervals of a few months or years. The secret is, of course, that by the former method, the populace are thoroughly imbued with a conviction of the power of the authorities, and of their ability and determination to crush a riot at any cost—a lesson remembered through life; while in the latter case, the half-quelled rioters are allowed to go home with a sort of feeling that they may after all be the stronger party, and the Government the weaker. Hence it is that while the
baton is the proper weapon of the policeman in times of peace and order, the rifle and the howitzer are the only merciful weapons in times of riot.