Committee of Inspection

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COMMITTEE OF INSPECTION

COMMITTEE OF INSPECTION. The Committee of Inspection was the most radical and intrusive of the organizations within the New York network of revolutionary-era committees of correspondence. It poked into the efforts of elite merchants to evade colonial boycotts. Led by radical Whigs Alexander McDougall and Isaac Sears, the committee was particularly active in discouraging merchants from paying the tea tax of 1773 and in protesting the Intolerable Acts of the following year. A large proportion of its members were working-class artisans and mechanics and not averse to crowd action. While groups in other colonies assumed similar functions, only in New York City was the term "Committee of Inspection" employed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gilje, Paul A. The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763–1834. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.

Carl E.Prince

See alsoCommittees of Correspondence .

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