"The people looked with most jealous scrutiny to the exercise of power which did not emanate from themselves, and they usually rewarded their rulers with slender gratitude for the compliances by which, in softening their instructions from beyond the sea, they had incurred the reprehension of those who gave them."
The narrator shows his dislike of the rebellious colonists when he describes the procession of the mob. Although, to the citizens of the colonies, the overthrowing of the governors and others who supported the crown was a victory over oppresion, and tyranny, the narrator doesn't feel that way. He gives the perspective of those who were deposed by the Revolutionary War. The following passage shows his contempt for the revolutionaries,
"On they went, like fiends that throng in mockery around some dead potentate, mighty no more, but majestic still in his agony. On they went, in counterfeited pomp, in senseless uproar, in frenzied merriment, trampling all on an old man's heart. On swept the tumult, and left a silent street behind."
Another passage in the story suggests the narrator to be a very religous person,
"A fainter yet more awful radianc was hovering around the pulpit, and one solitary ray had dared to rest upon the opened page of the great Bible. Had nature, in that deep hour, become a worshipper in the house which man had builded? Or was that heavenly light the visible sanctity of the place- visible because no earthly and impure feet were within the walls?"
I think this suggests that maybe some of the imagery used in the story may have a religous slant to it. I think this theme ties into the mob that traveled through the streets. The mob was described in a way representing evil. This is best exemplified by the following passage,
Then a redder light disturbed the moonbeams, and dense multitude of torches shone along the street, concealing, by their glare, whatever object they illuminated. The single horseman, clad in a military dress, and bearing a drawn sword, rode onward as the leader, and, by his fierce and variegated countenance, appeared like war personified: the red of one cheek was an emblem of fire and sword; the blackness of the other betokened the mourning that attends them. In his train were wild figures in the Indian dress, and many fantastic shapes without a model
Also, the description of the man with a two toned face seemed to contain some religous imagery. He was described as have a "forehead bulged out into a double prominence, with a vale between; the nose came boldly forth in an irregular curve, and its bridge was of more than a finger's breadth; the eyebrows were deep and shaggy, and the eyes glowed beneath them like fire in a cave"
First, his disfigured face makes me think of something unnatural. Also, the glowing eyes give him a supernatural quality. Add to that the black and red colors on each side of his face and he seems like a description of the devil in human form.