One peculiar circumstance may have caused a particular attachment for him on the part of the officers of government, that of having taken a bold stand against a class of desperadoes called _regulators_, who formed a dangerous association as early as 1766, in the interior of the province. They were composed principally of men who were ignorant, poor and savage, collected and led by men of more intelligence but of baser minds, who incited them to open rebellion by complaints against the civil authorities, and the promise of reward. They drove the judges from the bench and committed many personal outrages. They even set the military at defiance, and threatened to assume the entire rule. At that alarming crisis, Mr. Hooper was one who came forward and dared to advise decisive measures. The number of the regulators had accumulated to three thousand. The plan of Mr. Hooper was carried into execution; a military force was raised, a severe battle ensued and the insurgents were dispersed. This occurred in 1770. In 1773, Mr. Hooper was elected a member of the assembly of North Carolina, and discharged his duties so much to the satisfaction of his constituents, that they returned him the ensuing year. It was then that the creatures of the crown attempted to throw a ministerial coil of oppression around the people, and it was then that they found a bold, fearless, eloquent and uncompromising opponent in William Hooper. He not only met them in the legislative hall with incontrovertible arguments, but he spread their designs before the public far and wide, by a series of essays over the signature of Hampden. His course was in favour of liberal principles, but ruinous to his purse. The question before the assembly was the re-organization of the judiciary, which had become defunct by the expiration of the statute that created it. An attempt was made to model it in such a manner as to meet the designs of the British cabinet. So powerful was the influence of Mr. Hooper, that he kept his opponents at bay, and the province was a year without any courts.