Ah, but the British authorities would have definitely seen their action as that of mentally deranged people. Had there been modern psychology then, they might have found them violently anti-authoritarianistic. They might have claimed that these people, instead of harboring true grievances against the King and His Officers, had a mental disease which made them unfit to live among the civilized ones. They might have claimed their brain was defective, diseased, corrupted, disabled of the ability to think properly. That they did not is a credit to British common sense.
O that we too in America today could think people hold valid grievances against our own government instead of painting them broadly with the brush of mental illness and washing our hands of the mistreatment they suffer at the hands of our own agents...
A) At least one person, somewhere in history, has been falsely accused of being crazy because he was inconvenient to authorities.
To:
B) Johnny over here is telling me that the illuminati are conspiring to destroy the world through mind-control agents in flouridated water and he needs to take violent action to protect our vital essences. He should have the right to buy a gun.
I think you're operating under the assumption that actual mental illness doesn't exist.
O that we too in America today could think people hold valid grievances against our own government instead of painting them broadly with the brush of mental illness and washing our hands of the mistreatment they suffer at the hands of our own agents...