Lord God Almighty, in whose Name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant, we beseech thee, that we and all the peoples of this land may have grace to maintain these liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
In what sense did the people(s) of the new United States have more liberty after independence than before? In, say, the first few decades of independence?
Well, they were governed by laws enacted by representatives they themselves elected.
Dear Wilfred: yours is a common misconception. The truth is more like what I have pasted below from a website on colonial government.
Terry
The assembly, or lower house of the legislature, represented the people and was elected by them. It had the chief legislative power; but its acts could be vetoed by the governor, or be set aside by the Crown within a certain time after their passage. But the assembly held the key to the situation by its sole power of taxation. To this right the assembly of every colony clung with jealous tenacity. Through the exercise of this right the colonles may be said to have been self-governing, and their liberties were secure so long as they could retain this sole right of taxing themselves. For many years the British government wrestled in vain with the problem of how to get an American revenue at the disposal of the Crown. The governor, representing the Crown, and the assembly, representing the people, were in frequent conflict during the whole colonial period; and the assembly usually won through its one all-powerful weapon — a withholding of supplies.
Ah, Terry: So Tom Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and those other morons were just [i] imagining [/i] they were being misruled by the Crown? If only these uneducated dupes had had access to your website! Then they wouldn’t have written this:
[blockquote] When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
(John Hancock, el al. ) [/blockquote]
Goodness, what a long post. If you had tried to precis it then you would have quickly realized that it was hardly a logical answer to my question. Note, for example, that what you quote gives example after example of Americans resisting the tyranny of the crown. In sum, before ’76 the colonies had (a) representative government (b) habeas corpus (c) rule of law (d) freedom of the press.
The colonies even had one freedom which was denied to Britain. The American colonies were free to own slaves, which the British were not after the Mansfield judgement of 1772. Not that this stopped the British owning large numbers of slaves outside Britain, notably in the Caribbean.
One thing they had was a government close enough to petition regularly. With the King, they had to send representatives across the sea, wait to meet the representative of the King, eventually MAYBE see the King and then come back to the colonies with his decision. In which time, the King may have reversed his decision.
The local magistrates and courts often had the same problem, in that they had little actual administrative ability other than enforcing laws and collecting taxes, not ruling on appeals on them.
1. Terry, you’re right about the length. I seldom write (or read) long posts. I’m too lazy. Thomas Jefferson wasn’t.
2. Here’s my precis: Americans thought the taxes levied were too high & arbitrary. They lacked real representation in Parliament. They were frustrated by mercantilist policies that restricted overseas trade to Britain. Forced quartering of His Majesty’s troops in private homes was unpopular, especially Hessian mercenaries. These troops were immune to local laws, and acted like they knew it. Americans were being seized from merchant vessels & forced to serve in the British navy. The Crown formed alliances with Indian tribes, who were in brutal conflict with the settlers. The Crown even ordered settlers west of the Alleghenies to abandon their homesteads – infuriating for anybody, but especially if you had already once been evicted from your homestead in Scotland to make room for more sheep. I could go on, but a real American historian could do a better job. (But they’re all away from their computers today, eating barbecue).
3. The leaders of the American Revolution were smart enough to spot the incongruity of their ideals of Liberty and practice of slavery. But they also calculated that, had they tried to abolish slavery at the same time, the United States would have died aborning.
4. You are right that British colonial rule wasn’t nearly as tyrannical as, say, 20th (& 21st) Century dictatorships. Had British leadership showed more intelligence & less arrogance, they might have kept their colonies. Before 1776, the colonists were fighting for their rights, not for independence, and there was a common belief that the problem was just with Parliament & the royal governors; if only the King understood their grievances, he would address them & they would continue as British subjects.
5. Very few Americans are anti-English (except for Mel Gibson) to the extent that many British intellectuals (e.g. your BBC) are anti-American. Three of my four grand-parents were born subjects of HRH Queen Victoria. I even had a distant cousin who was awarded an MBE. But I have never heard an American, drunk or sober, say we would have had more liberty under British rule.
I almost completely agree with Wilfred. I better ‘fess up (as you say in the US) that my main purpose as a Brit was to tweak your tails gently on July 4th. Also, I was surprised that in an Anglican-based blog there was no remembrance of the hundreds of thousands of loyalists, many of them Anglican, who were expelled from the new United States because they had been on the side of the King.
Still, let us be thankful for those wonderful words: ‘We the people …’ Truly it was an audacious venture, and it blazed a trail which many nations were to follow. I take my hat off to those who had the vision and the drive to bring a new nation into being and a new understanding of sovereignty which would empower the ordinary people. It has been the engine of freedom and prosperity around the world ever since.
Alas, I have to agree with Wilfred about the anti-Americanism. As a pro-American Brit I am frequently appalled at the prejudice and lack of generosity. Just one caveat, however. Wilfred is not quite right in saying there has been no comparably knee-jerk anti-British sentiment in the US. It was often to be found in Irish Americans, with long memories of British misrule in Ireland. In the UK today we are acutely aware of how the IRA was heavily funded by misguided sympathisers in the US. (Just to refresh your memories: among the citizens killed in the UK by IRA bombs were children outside a McDonalds, commuters in railway stations, travellers on long-distance coaches and drinkers in pubs. In Ireland victims itself included a nun (a Sister of St Louis) driving a car over a roadside bomb meant for a judge; the British Ambassador to Dublin, again a bomb buried under a road; and the uncle of the queen (his boat blown up; the teenage boatswain, a local lad, killed with him). When and how did all this stop? After 9/11. The IRA realized that there would be no more funding from the US for acts of terrorism against the British, and sued for peace. We now have a whole new beginning in Northern Ireland. Deo gratias. But it would have come a whole lot earlier without those subventions from across the Atlantic.
[i] Also, I was surprised that in an Anglican-based blog there was no remembrance of the hundreds of thousands of loyalists, many of them Anglican, who were expelled from the new United States because they had been on the side of the King.
[/i]
Just the Irish and Scots retrning the favor, Terry.
I find it ironic that the American colonies revolted over an effective tax rate of 2-3% of their income.
[blockquote]You are right that British colonial rule wasn’t nearly as tyrannical as, say, 20th (& 21st) Century dictatorships.[/blockquote]
I’ll go you one better: British colonial rule wasn’t nearly as tyrannical as 20th and 21st century democracies.
Of course they were hindered by not having 20-21st century technologies for communicaitons, as well. Given today’s technology, I’m sure they would have matched us with no trouble at all.
Just ask all the Scotsmen who returned home from war to find their homes burned, their goods destroyed and their women wailing in the snow.
George III was not as lax as one would seem to think.
[blockquote]I Will Go
(Trad)
I will go, I will go
When the fighting is over
Tae the land of MacLeod
I left to be a soldier
I will go, I will go
The king’s son came along, he called us all together
Saying, Brave Highland men, you will fight for my father
I will go, I will go
I’ve a buckle tae my belt, a sword in my scabbard
A red coat on my back and a shilling in my pocket
I will go, I will go
When they put us all on board the lassies were singing
The tears came to their eyes when they heard the bells a-ringing
I will go, I will go
When we landed on that shore and saw the foreign heather we
We knew some would die and lie there forever
I will go, I will go
When we came back through the glen winter was turning
Our families in the snow and our homes they were burning
I will go, I will go [/blockquote]
Which, by the way, is how so many family from Scotland wound up in the New World Colonies. 8-/
a site giving some of the history behind the song can be found here