July 18, 2025 • 23 mins
We explore the key grievances that American colonists held against King George III and the British Parliament as outlined in the Declaration of Independence, examining how these complaints formed the legal basis for revolution.
• The bulk of the Declaration of Independence functions as a legal indictment against British rule, not just philosophical statements
• Parliament initially received more blame than King George in earlier colonial protests
• Colonial self-government was the primary concern - the ability to elect local lawmakers was seen as the essence of liberty
• Judicial independence became a key grievance when the King controlled judges' tenure and salaries
• These complaints directly influenced protections later enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights
• Americans positioned themselves as conservatives defending traditional British liberties, not radicals
• The revolution occurred only after years of ignored petitions and "patient sufferance"
• Lincoln later distinguished the American Revolution from Confederate secession based on this patient approach
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, my name is Annie, I'm from Alabama and I'm a
sophomore and I want to knowwhat were some of the colonists
key complaints against KingGeorge, the third in the
parliament, to kind of answerthe question about some of the
(00:28):
key complaints, the grievancesagainst King George III and
Parliament, which makes up areally large portion of the
Declaration of Independence.
So, dr Birenberg, can you tellus a little bit about what some
of those key complaints againstKing George and Parliament were?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Sure.
So there's a, as I sorry,delete that.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
You're fine.
I was recording the section.
One thing and it took me likefive or six tries because I kept
tripping over my words and thengetting dry mouth or the dog
would bark or I would sneeze.
It was a mess.
Dog would bark or I wouldsneeze it was a mess.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So, as you identified , I think quite rightly, and as
I tell my students, the strikingthing about the Declaration of
Independence is, you know,there's a very famous sort of
opening with the philosophicaldiscussions, you know when, in
the course of human events, butparticularly that we hold these
truths to be self-evident in theparagraph.
But the bulk of the Declarationof Independence is actually in
(01:25):
some sense almost a legalindictment.
Count one, count two, countthree, all of the things that
they are charging the Britishgovernment with doing wrong, and
I think it was really also aptto note that sort of in popular
conception it's come to bebasically primarily blamed on
King George.
But if you look under the hoodand also in the earlier draft
(01:56):
versions, parliament is, ifanything, an equal or greater
participant.
I mean, one of the things thatI think is striking is that King
George is not George III, isnot a sort of absolutist monarch
in the sense of Louis XIVFrance.
This doesn't mean that I'msaying like the American
Revolution was a mistake, he wasthe good guy, etc.
But King George very muchviewed himself as a participant
(02:18):
in the English political projectand English political liberty.
He was effectively the firstBritish monarch to be sort of
raised in England and sort ofculturated in this.
So you know he was not justsort of issuing arbitrary edicts
but working with parliament ina lot of stuff.
A patriot king is often what hewas, could have kind of
(02:39):
conceived of himself as, andmany of the most aggressive
assertions of sovereigntyweren't coming from King George,
but they were in fact comingfrom Parliament.
That one of the legacies of andI'll talk more about this in
one of the other sessions butone of the legacies of English
(03:00):
colonial or English history inthe 17th and 18th centuries was
the supremacy of parliament inmany ways over the monarch.
So parliament was effectivelyasserting its own sovereignty
over the British empire and theearlier drafts of the
Declaration of Independence weremore explicit about blaming
parliament and the earliermessages sent from the colonists
(03:25):
back to Britain were almostalways blaming Parliament
primarily.
They often took the tone ofKing George, please save us from
the wicked Parliament.
Like we are loyal to you in ourunderstanding of the empire,
parliament is the one breakingstuff.
So we'll talk more about that.
But in the final version KingGeorge does end up being
primarily the one who's blamedfor things and, as I tell my
(03:46):
students, there are sort of, Ithink, pretty obvious political
reasons for why that is.
It's much more, it's mucheasier to burn King George in
effigy than Parliament.
Like, what are you going to do?
Like build this elaborateWestminster thing right now?
You're not going to do that.
Like build this elaborateWestminster thing, right?
No, you're not going to do that.
(04:07):
So King George just sort ofends up being the
personification of this.
But the list of the charges, youcan break them up into a few
things.
I would say the primary set ofobjections are to the loss of
self-government by the colonies.
One of the themes that I thinkis quite striking and I'll
(04:29):
elaborate on this, I think, in alater podcast is that in some
ways the American Revolution isan English Civil War, about a
discussion of where politics,where power, is primarily
supposed to be housed inparliament or distributed.
And so if you look at the firstdistributed among the colonies,
I should say, or no more amongthe local kind of governments.
So if you look at the first fewobjections in the Declaration
(04:53):
of Independence, they'relamenting that the king has
refused his assent to laws themost wholesome and necessary for
the public, that is to say thatthe colonies are passing laws
in their local governments andthe king and his counselors are
declining them.
He's forbidden his governors topass laws of immediate and
pressing importance.
Again, that is effectively areiteration of the same count.
(05:15):
He's refused to pass laws forthe accommodation of districts
of large people unless thosepeople would relinquish the
right of representation in thelegislature.
He's basically trying to coercethem to give up their local
legislative power.
Next count he's called togetherlegislative bodies at places
unusual and uncomfortable anddistant from the depository of
the public records right.
He's making the legislaturemeet, in weird ways, the local
(05:38):
legislatures.
He's dissolved representativehouses repeatedly.
He's refused to cause others tobe elected, and so on and so
forth.
So there's, this real concernthat the British government, in
this case specifically KingGeorge, but that the British
government is effectively makingit impossible for the colonists
(05:58):
to govern themselves.
He's literally closing down theMassachusetts legislature, and
so they recognize this, becausethe Americans understand this
ability of a free people toelect their lawmakers is what,
in some sense, they understandthe core of being a free people
is about, even more so than acivil liberties claim or
(06:21):
something like that.
You know a civil libertiesclaim or something like that
that being able to the politicalliberty in the sense of a group
of people being able to shapetheir own destiny through the
legislature, is what they thinkbeing free is about in some
sense.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
So can I ask a question really quick?
Is this something that happenslike all at once, or is this
something that had beenhappening and kind of just built
up to a point where you know wehave now we have this list of
grievances that have been goingon for a while?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, so that one has been sort of building up, so
building up for about 10 years,10 years or more.
So effectively, the Britishgovernment has been passing the
various taxes Stamp Act, youknow about all those and the
Americans would complain and saythis needs to be sort of a
(07:10):
local thing.
To be sort of a local thing, um, and sort of back and forth.
Often the british governmentwould end up sort of backing off
the tax but then sort ofasserting the sovereignty, and
then this kept getting pushedand, pushed and pushed and then
eventually the americans, uh, inthe you know, 1774, 75, start
saying like no, we are not goingto do this, um, and the america
(07:32):
the british government again,not unreasonably eventually
decides that the Americans arein a state of rebellion, and so
they start imposing again fairlydraconian policies like closing
the legislature.
And so if the Americans thatsort of has vindicated what
they've been saying, which isthat the British government is
conspiring to take away ourlocal government, it's hard to
(07:53):
deny that literally having yourlocal government closed down is
not sort of the example of whatthey've been sort of worried
about for a while.
So the actual, the actual, sortof real biting charges is stuff
that's only happened in thelast couple of years, but it's
building on themes that theAmericans and the British have
(08:15):
been sort of going back andforth and squabbling about for
about a decade.
So the local government, againthat's one we'll talk more about
, but that's a really core oneand it's much more explicit in
the earlier 1774 Declaration ofResolves.
But you also see a lot of otherobjections that I think are
striking insofar as theyanticipate things that the
(08:37):
Americans care about in theConstitution, which is why you
know there are some people inAmerican history that have tried
to say that the Declaration andthe Constitution are really
separate, or the Constitution isa betrayal of the Declaration,
and I just don't think thatthat's a fair read.
If you look at the list ofobjections that are being raised
in the Declaration now, most ofthem get translated in some
(08:58):
ways into the Constitution,right.
So you have a lot of concern.
Again, the Americans are peoplewho care about liberty and the
rule of law, and so one of thethings that I always point out
to my students is you haveseveral sections discussing sort
of problems with the judiciary,problems with the
implementation of justice.
So again we have a he'sobstructed the administration of
(09:21):
justice by refusing his assentto laws for establishing
judiciary powers.
So there's a protest that theking isn't building the proper
court system, but then one thatI think is really important he
has made judges dependent on hiswill alone for the tenure of
their offices and the amount andpayment of their salaries.
That's literally ends up beingtranslated into the US
Constitution later on, and theAmericans have a pretty good
(09:46):
case to protest this, becausethis had been one of the lessons
of the English Civil War andbuilding afterward, which is
that the king should not be ableto control judges.
And so in 1701, in the act ofsettlement, sort of in the kind
of clean up and end game of theGlorious Revolution which the
(10:07):
Americans look back on as this,in some sense they look back on
this as the inspiration fortheir own revolution.
That this was when a freeBritish people asserted their
British liberties.
But one of the things that theBritish government recognizes
the monarch recognizes themonarch, I guess I'd say the
joint monarchs at that point isthat the judges need to be
(10:29):
independent, in the sense thatthey can't get pushed around and
have their salaries tweaked,and so they pass a law, but it
only applies in England, and sothis is understood as an English
right, but it's one thattechnically doesn't get
translated over to the colonies,and so the Americans have a
pretty good case to say look,this is a really fundamental
English liberty that we haveviewed as important for almost a
(10:51):
century at this point arguablylonger, if you want to think
about sort of the endgame of theEnglish Civil War 50 years
before that and that's not beinggiven to us.
They would say this is Englishliberty.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
So that's a really core objection.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
They think that the court system is not operating
fairly, it's not doing the ruleof law, it's basically becoming
a pawn of the British government.
Not unreasonably.
That shows up in the USConstitution as something that
needs to be fundamentallyguarded against making sure that
this judicial independencehappens.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You see discussion and it shows up in the
Federalist Papers too, like alot of what you're talking about
and again there will be podcastepisodes on that but a lot of
what you're talking about withthe independent judiciary it's
in Federalist 70, right.
A lot of these founders tookwhat is in there and immediately
were talking about it andmaking sure about.
(11:50):
Taking away at the localgovernment is the importance of
that that you know ourparliament is an ocean away.
It's not easy to get to, it'snot easy to have these
conversations, as it would be togo down to your local
government or to a local townhall.
So the loss of that forcolonists, would it be fair to
(12:14):
say it almost feels like a lossof just government in general.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, I mean that's right.
So I'll talk more about thiswhen we talk about sort of what
the real fundamentaldisagreement is between
Parliament and the colonists.
But yeah, it's worth notingthat they say, not only because
there's some discussion, like,well, maybe we could just have a
seat in Parliament, but you'renot going to be ableruled by
numbers, most likely, but you'realso just not going to be able
to, as you said, really connectwith, understand these problems,
(12:48):
and so, yeah, so this taxationwithout representation is not,
which ends up being sort of therallying cry.
Representation isn't just goingto be sort of token.
You know we've got somebodyhere to complain about this in
Westminster isn't just going tobe sort of token.
You know, we've got somebodyhere to complain about this in
Westminster.
The idea really is and thisshows up in lots of documents
that at the time that, as yousaid, I think quite nicely, they
(13:12):
understand local government ina sense to be government itself,
so you need to be basicallyable to understand the problems
of your society, able tounderstand these and able to
sort of communicate with peoplewho have similar sets of
problems and circumstances.
And so you know they will oftenjust describe it as
(13:33):
self-government.
But if you really have a senseof what their ideas are about,
the self-government isinseparable from the local
government for them, which iswhy you know to this day the
American constitutional order isso decentralized, like that is
a deep legacy that comes fromthe American Revolution itself.
So that's absolutely, that'sabsolutely right, and you see
(13:56):
that continue to pop up again insome of the other objections.
So they protest he's kept amongus in times of peace standing
armies without the consent ofour legislatures right, which
suggests that the standingarmies would in fact be okay if
our local legislatures hadapproved of it.
(14:16):
You know, and they go on to saythat he's combined with others
to subject us others, meaningparliament here to subject us to
a jurisdiction foreign to ourconstitution, unacknowledged by
our laws, giving his assent totheir acts of pretended
legislation.
So again protesting thatbasically parliament is
asserting uh authority here, butso many of the other objections
(14:38):
you know, quartering largebodies of soldiers among us,
basically just depriving us oftrial by jury.
These end up being placed notonly in the state constitutions
but eventually in the USConstitution and its bill and
its bill of rights.
So so the objections I thinkare, you know, there's some of
(15:00):
them that seem much moretemporally limited, to sort of
the specific kind of objectionsof the time, but really the core
of them is things like he istaking away our local government
, they're taking away ourcharters, suspending our
legislatures, making sure thatwe don't have a functioning and
fair court system, making surewe don't have English liberties
like trial by juries.
(15:20):
So really, these are theAmericans saying it in its core
um, not only these rights thatwe particularly think of as core
British liberties, uh, but insome sense what we think of as
like the, the, the, the properworkings of government itself,
um, so it's not just uh, and soyou can see that the sort of the
(15:40):
philosophical parts uh reallyactually do dovetail with the
sort of the philosophical partsuh really actually do dovetail
with the sort of list ofobjections, right, that, um,
that they think that governmentsneed to be able to be
responsive, right, you see thisin the beginning sections.
Um, you see that the idea thatthey take self-government
seriously, they take the idea oflosing in politics seriously,
so they don't just say, well, wedidn't our way, so we're
(16:02):
storming out immediately, butthat the British system, which
they fundamentally think is afree system I mean, this is one
of the things that is somewhathard for Americans to get around
.
But until very, very late in theprocess they view themselves as
loyal British citizens and thecritique is British government,
follow, I was going to say, yourrules.
(16:23):
But they say our rules, likefollow the system that we have
come to believe in, and they sayour constitution.
There's no formal Britishconstitution in the sense that
we have in the United States,but there is the idea of.
This is how it's done.
These are what our libertieshave been for decades or
centuries, for decades orcenturies.
(16:46):
And you, british Parliament,slash King, are no longer living
up to those and you're notresponding when we ask you to
live up to those.
So we don't have any choice butto leave, because you're not
dealing with the objectionswe're raising and have been
raising.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
So why do you think it was so important to have this
long list of grievances?
You hit on it a little bit, butI mean we're talking about the
bulk of this document beingthese grievances and obviously
I'm sure there were more,because you can't list
everything.
But why do you think it was soimportant for Jefferson and the
(17:16):
other authors to actually gothrough and make this list?
Because the.
Declaration is not a governingdocument right.
Like, but we see that itinfluences so many things, so
why this long list?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, I mean they're, they're trying they recognize.
I mean, revolution is a bigdeal.
Revolution throws you back intothe state of nature.
In a sense, it destroysinstitutions that are important,
like, uh, in terms ofmaintaining law and order, right
, so revolution is dangerous andnot something to be taken uh
lightly, and so they're veryexplicit about that and later on
(17:55):
.
This is where people, you know,have discussions about what's
the difference between theamerican revolution and the
french revolution.
Um, that's not to downplay thesets of problems with the French
Revolution, but the Americansvery much want to show that they
are conservative states.
It isn't right in the sense ofleft-right, but they want to say
(18:17):
, in effect, we are the onestrying to protect what the
system has been.
We think that these are whatthe rules have always been.
You guys are the ones trying toprotect what the system has
been.
We think that these are whatthe rules have always been.
You guys are the ones changingit right.
So they want to basicallyposition themselves as the ones
defending traditional Britishliberties, which they're
increasingly justifying as sortof natural liberties, and that
the British government are theones that are making the shift.
(18:39):
They're the ones that are doingthe wrong.
They're the ones that arepushing for a change that hasn't
been, from their perspective,consented to by the British
people, or at least the Britishpeople in these colonies.
I laughed earlier about theburning, the effigy thing, but
there's another reason that itmakes sense to sort of position
(19:00):
the king as increasingly the badguy, because, potentially, if
Parliament is the bad guy.
Parliament is selected by theBritish people and that's an
awkward situation to say at theend the British people are the
bad guys, right, and so that'sanother reason that they're
uneasy about that.
But you know they're quiteexplicit about this in the
Declaration itself.
(19:21):
They talk about the patientsufferance of these colonies.
The history is a history ofrepeated injuries and
usurpations, having in directobject the establishment of an
absolute tyranny over thesestates.
Probably a little overheatedrhetoric there, but they are
right to say this is repeatedinjuries.
And then they say to prove this, let facts be submitted to a
(19:42):
candid world.
So they want to say look, we'remaking the case.
Here's a list of legalindictments.
You can go back and look at thehistory and tell us whether
these are right or wrongpetitions Our British brethren
have been ignoring when theysaid we warned them from time to
time of their attempts by theirlegislature to extend an
(20:09):
unwarrantable jurisdiction overthis, we cited our old charters.
That we did.
We've appealed to their Britishliberties, and so they've
ignored us.
And so the Americans really dowant to say we are the ones
defending what we all thought weagreed on.
We all thought we agreed onthese importance of these
English liberties.
And so we've made our case.
(20:32):
We've tried to make our case,you didn't listen.
From their perspective, theysay we literally have no other
choice left.
We tried to do this through thesystem, but the system is not
responsive, it's not.
Self-government is impossiblein the way that the British are
trying to implement this system.
So they say at that point wehave to reluctantly implement
(20:55):
revolution, not just becauselike, oh well, we lost a, you
know, we lost a vote, so we'reout right.
So this is something we'll talkabout this more in the Civil
War sections, I assume.
Right, lincoln wants to say thisis a fundamental difference
between the American Revolution,which he adores, and
Confederate secession.
He's like look, you guys lostone election and literally
before I've even taken office,you're all saying, oh game,
(21:18):
system's broken, I got to peaceout.
Like, what are you doing atthat point?
Hey, system's broken, I got topeace out.
What are you doing at thatpoint?
So Lincoln very much wants tosay the American revolutionaries
did this right, they werepatient, they were cautious,
they tried to work through thesystem.
The system wouldn't work.
It's not just, basically, welost an election, we're spoiled
and we're storming off, which ishow Lincoln understands
(21:40):
effectively the Confederates andwhy he views them.
Part of why he views them thereare many reasons why he views
them quite negatively, butthat's certainly one of them is
he views it as trying to sort ofbesmirch the American
revolutionaries by, like,wrapping themselves the
Confederates wrapping themselvesin the American revolutionaries
flag.
And Lincoln wants to say theseare fundamentally different.
(22:01):
These are fundamentallydifferent.
The American revolutionarieshad an actual long list of
objections.
You guys just lost one electionand you're gone Now.
That overstates it a little bit, but fundamentally that's where
Lincoln sees the difference.
Hi, my name is Annie, I'm from Alabama and I'm a
sophomore and I want to knowwhat were some of the colonists
key complaints against KingGeorge, the third in the
parliament, to kind of answerthe question about some of the
(00:28):
key complaints, the grievancesagainst King George III and
Parliament, which makes up areally large portion of the
Declaration of Independence.
So, dr Birenberg, can you tellus a little bit about what some
of those key complaints againstKing George and Parliament were?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Sure.
So there's a, as I sorry,delete that.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
You're fine.
I was recording the section.
One thing and it took me likefive or six tries because I kept
tripping over my words and thengetting dry mouth or the dog
would bark or I would sneeze.
It was a mess.
Dog would bark or I wouldsneeze it was a mess.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So, as you identified , I think quite rightly, and as
I tell my students, the strikingthing about the Declaration of
Independence is, you know,there's a very famous sort of
opening with the philosophicaldiscussions, you know when, in
the course of human events, butparticularly that we hold these
truths to be self-evident in theparagraph.
But the bulk of the Declarationof Independence is actually in
(01:25):
some sense almost a legalindictment.
Count one, count two, countthree, all of the things that
they are charging the Britishgovernment with doing wrong, and
I think it was really also aptto note that sort of in popular
conception it's come to bebasically primarily blamed on
King George.
But if you look under the hoodand also in the earlier draft
(01:56):
versions, parliament is, ifanything, an equal or greater
participant.
I mean, one of the things thatI think is striking is that King
George is not George III, isnot a sort of absolutist monarch
in the sense of Louis XIVFrance.
This doesn't mean that I'msaying like the American
Revolution was a mistake, he wasthe good guy, etc.
But King George very muchviewed himself as a participant
(02:18):
in the English political projectand English political liberty.
He was effectively the firstBritish monarch to be sort of
raised in England and sort ofculturated in this.
So you know he was not justsort of issuing arbitrary edicts
but working with parliament ina lot of stuff.
A patriot king is often what hewas, could have kind of
(02:39):
conceived of himself as, andmany of the most aggressive
assertions of sovereigntyweren't coming from King George,
but they were in fact comingfrom Parliament.
That one of the legacies of andI'll talk more about this in
one of the other sessions butone of the legacies of English
(03:00):
colonial or English history inthe 17th and 18th centuries was
the supremacy of parliament inmany ways over the monarch.
So parliament was effectivelyasserting its own sovereignty
over the British empire and theearlier drafts of the
Declaration of Independence weremore explicit about blaming
parliament and the earliermessages sent from the colonists
(03:25):
back to Britain were almostalways blaming Parliament
primarily.
They often took the tone ofKing George, please save us from
the wicked Parliament.
Like we are loyal to you in ourunderstanding of the empire,
parliament is the one breakingstuff.
So we'll talk more about that.
But in the final version KingGeorge does end up being
primarily the one who's blamedfor things and, as I tell my
(03:46):
students, there are sort of, Ithink, pretty obvious political
reasons for why that is.
It's much more, it's mucheasier to burn King George in
effigy than Parliament.
Like, what are you going to do?
Like build this elaborateWestminster thing right now?
You're not going to do that.
Like build this elaborateWestminster thing, right?
No, you're not going to do that.
(04:07):
So King George just sort ofends up being the
personification of this.
But the list of the charges, youcan break them up into a few
things.
I would say the primary set ofobjections are to the loss of
self-government by the colonies.
One of the themes that I thinkis quite striking and I'll
(04:29):
elaborate on this, I think, in alater podcast is that in some
ways the American Revolution isan English Civil War, about a
discussion of where politics,where power, is primarily
supposed to be housed inparliament or distributed.
And so if you look at the firstdistributed among the colonies,
I should say, or no more amongthe local kind of governments.
So if you look at the first fewobjections in the Declaration
(04:53):
of Independence, they'relamenting that the king has
refused his assent to laws themost wholesome and necessary for
the public, that is to say thatthe colonies are passing laws
in their local governments andthe king and his counselors are
declining them.
He's forbidden his governors topass laws of immediate and
pressing importance.
Again, that is effectively areiteration of the same count.
(05:15):
He's refused to pass laws forthe accommodation of districts
of large people unless thosepeople would relinquish the
right of representation in thelegislature.
He's basically trying to coercethem to give up their local
legislative power.
Next count he's called togetherlegislative bodies at places
unusual and uncomfortable anddistant from the depository of
the public records right.
He's making the legislaturemeet, in weird ways, the local
(05:38):
legislatures.
He's dissolved representativehouses repeatedly.
He's refused to cause others tobe elected, and so on and so
forth.
So there's, this real concernthat the British government, in
this case specifically KingGeorge, but that the British
government is effectively makingit impossible for the colonists
(05:58):
to govern themselves.
He's literally closing down theMassachusetts legislature, and
so they recognize this, becausethe Americans understand this
ability of a free people toelect their lawmakers is what,
in some sense, they understandthe core of being a free people
is about, even more so than acivil liberties claim or
(06:21):
something like that.
You know a civil libertiesclaim or something like that
that being able to the politicalliberty in the sense of a group
of people being able to shapetheir own destiny through the
legislature, is what they thinkbeing free is about in some
sense.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
So can I ask a question really quick?
Is this something that happenslike all at once, or is this
something that had beenhappening and kind of just built
up to a point where you know wehave now we have this list of
grievances that have been goingon for a while?
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, so that one has been sort of building up, so
building up for about 10 years,10 years or more.
So effectively, the Britishgovernment has been passing the
various taxes Stamp Act, youknow about all those and the
Americans would complain and saythis needs to be sort of a
(07:10):
local thing.
To be sort of a local thing, um, and sort of back and forth.
Often the british governmentwould end up sort of backing off
the tax but then sort ofasserting the sovereignty, and
then this kept getting pushedand, pushed and pushed and then
eventually the americans, uh, inthe you know, 1774, 75, start
saying like no, we are not goingto do this, um, and the america
(07:32):
the british government again,not unreasonably eventually
decides that the Americans arein a state of rebellion, and so
they start imposing again fairlydraconian policies like closing
the legislature.
And so if the Americans thatsort of has vindicated what
they've been saying, which isthat the British government is
conspiring to take away ourlocal government, it's hard to
(07:53):
deny that literally having yourlocal government closed down is
not sort of the example of whatthey've been sort of worried
about for a while.
So the actual, the actual, sortof real biting charges is stuff
that's only happened in thelast couple of years, but it's
building on themes that theAmericans and the British have
(08:15):
been sort of going back andforth and squabbling about for
about a decade.
So the local government, againthat's one we'll talk more about
, but that's a really core oneand it's much more explicit in
the earlier 1774 Declaration ofResolves.
But you also see a lot of otherobjections that I think are
striking insofar as theyanticipate things that the
(08:37):
Americans care about in theConstitution, which is why you
know there are some people inAmerican history that have tried
to say that the Declaration andthe Constitution are really
separate, or the Constitution isa betrayal of the Declaration,
and I just don't think thatthat's a fair read.
If you look at the list ofobjections that are being raised
in the Declaration now, most ofthem get translated in some
(08:58):
ways into the Constitution,right.
So you have a lot of concern.
Again, the Americans are peoplewho care about liberty and the
rule of law, and so one of thethings that I always point out
to my students is you haveseveral sections discussing sort
of problems with the judiciary,problems with the
implementation of justice.
So again we have a he'sobstructed the administration of
(09:21):
justice by refusing his assentto laws for establishing
judiciary powers.
So there's a protest that theking isn't building the proper
court system, but then one thatI think is really important he
has made judges dependent on hiswill alone for the tenure of
their offices and the amount andpayment of their salaries.
That's literally ends up beingtranslated into the US
Constitution later on, and theAmericans have a pretty good
(09:46):
case to protest this, becausethis had been one of the lessons
of the English Civil War andbuilding afterward, which is
that the king should not be ableto control judges.
And so in 1701, in the act ofsettlement, sort of in the kind
of clean up and end game of theGlorious Revolution which the
(10:07):
Americans look back on as this,in some sense they look back on
this as the inspiration fortheir own revolution.
That this was when a freeBritish people asserted their
British liberties.
But one of the things that theBritish government recognizes
the monarch recognizes themonarch, I guess I'd say the
joint monarchs at that point isthat the judges need to be
(10:29):
independent, in the sense thatthey can't get pushed around and
have their salaries tweaked,and so they pass a law, but it
only applies in England, and sothis is understood as an English
right, but it's one thattechnically doesn't get
translated over to the colonies,and so the Americans have a
pretty good case to say look,this is a really fundamental
English liberty that we haveviewed as important for almost a
(10:51):
century at this point arguablylonger, if you want to think
about sort of the endgame of theEnglish Civil War 50 years
before that and that's not beinggiven to us.
They would say this is Englishliberty.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
So that's a really core objection.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
They think that the court system is not operating
fairly, it's not doing the ruleof law, it's basically becoming
a pawn of the British government.
Not unreasonably.
That shows up in the USConstitution as something that
needs to be fundamentallyguarded against making sure that
this judicial independencehappens.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
You see discussion and it shows up in the
Federalist Papers too, like alot of what you're talking about
and again there will be podcastepisodes on that but a lot of
what you're talking about withthe independent judiciary it's
in Federalist 70, right.
A lot of these founders tookwhat is in there and immediately
were talking about it andmaking sure about.
(11:50):
Taking away at the localgovernment is the importance of
that that you know ourparliament is an ocean away.
It's not easy to get to, it'snot easy to have these
conversations, as it would be togo down to your local
government or to a local townhall.
So the loss of that forcolonists, would it be fair to
(12:14):
say it almost feels like a lossof just government in general.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, I mean that's right.
So I'll talk more about thiswhen we talk about sort of what
the real fundamentaldisagreement is between
Parliament and the colonists.
But yeah, it's worth notingthat they say, not only because
there's some discussion, like,well, maybe we could just have a
seat in Parliament, but you'renot going to be ableruled by
numbers, most likely, but you'realso just not going to be able
to, as you said, really connectwith, understand these problems,
(12:48):
and so, yeah, so this taxationwithout representation is not,
which ends up being sort of therallying cry.
Representation isn't just goingto be sort of token.
You know we've got somebodyhere to complain about this in
Westminster isn't just going tobe sort of token.
You know, we've got somebodyhere to complain about this in
Westminster.
The idea really is and thisshows up in lots of documents
that at the time that, as yousaid, I think quite nicely, they
(13:12):
understand local government ina sense to be government itself,
so you need to be basicallyable to understand the problems
of your society, able tounderstand these and able to
sort of communicate with peoplewho have similar sets of
problems and circumstances.
And so you know they will oftenjust describe it as
(13:33):
self-government.
But if you really have a senseof what their ideas are about,
the self-government isinseparable from the local
government for them, which iswhy you know to this day the
American constitutional order isso decentralized, like that is
a deep legacy that comes fromthe American Revolution itself.
So that's absolutely, that'sabsolutely right, and you see
(13:56):
that continue to pop up again insome of the other objections.
So they protest he's kept amongus in times of peace standing
armies without the consent ofour legislatures right, which
suggests that the standingarmies would in fact be okay if
our local legislatures hadapproved of it.
(14:16):
You know, and they go on to saythat he's combined with others
to subject us others, meaningparliament here to subject us to
a jurisdiction foreign to ourconstitution, unacknowledged by
our laws, giving his assent totheir acts of pretended
legislation.
So again protesting thatbasically parliament is
asserting uh authority here, butso many of the other objections
(14:38):
you know, quartering largebodies of soldiers among us,
basically just depriving us oftrial by jury.
These end up being placed notonly in the state constitutions
but eventually in the USConstitution and its bill and
its bill of rights.
So so the objections I thinkare, you know, there's some of
(15:00):
them that seem much moretemporally limited, to sort of
the specific kind of objectionsof the time, but really the core
of them is things like he istaking away our local government
, they're taking away ourcharters, suspending our
legislatures, making sure thatwe don't have a functioning and
fair court system, making surewe don't have English liberties
like trial by juries.
(15:20):
So really, these are theAmericans saying it in its core
um, not only these rights thatwe particularly think of as core
British liberties, uh, but insome sense what we think of as
like the, the, the, the properworkings of government itself,
um, so it's not just uh, and soyou can see that the sort of the
(15:40):
philosophical parts uh reallyactually do dovetail with the
sort of the philosophical partsuh really actually do dovetail
with the sort of list ofobjections, right, that, um,
that they think that governmentsneed to be able to be
responsive, right, you see thisin the beginning sections.
Um, you see that the idea thatthey take self-government
seriously, they take the idea oflosing in politics seriously,
so they don't just say, well, wedidn't our way, so we're
(16:02):
storming out immediately, butthat the British system, which
they fundamentally think is afree system I mean, this is one
of the things that is somewhathard for Americans to get around
.
But until very, very late in theprocess they view themselves as
loyal British citizens and thecritique is British government,
follow, I was going to say, yourrules.
(16:23):
But they say our rules, likefollow the system that we have
come to believe in, and they sayour constitution.
There's no formal Britishconstitution in the sense that
we have in the United States,but there is the idea of.
This is how it's done.
These are what our libertieshave been for decades or
centuries, for decades orcenturies.
(16:46):
And you, british Parliament,slash King, are no longer living
up to those and you're notresponding when we ask you to
live up to those.
So we don't have any choice butto leave, because you're not
dealing with the objectionswe're raising and have been
raising.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
So why do you think it was so important to have this
long list of grievances?
You hit on it a little bit, butI mean we're talking about the
bulk of this document beingthese grievances and obviously
I'm sure there were more,because you can't list
everything.
But why do you think it was soimportant for Jefferson and the
(17:16):
other authors to actually gothrough and make this list?
Because the.
Declaration is not a governingdocument right.
Like, but we see that itinfluences so many things, so
why this long list?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, I mean they're, they're trying they recognize.
I mean, revolution is a bigdeal.
Revolution throws you back intothe state of nature.
In a sense, it destroysinstitutions that are important,
like, uh, in terms ofmaintaining law and order, right
, so revolution is dangerous andnot something to be taken uh
lightly, and so they're veryexplicit about that and later on
(17:55):
.
This is where people, you know,have discussions about what's
the difference between theamerican revolution and the
french revolution.
Um, that's not to downplay thesets of problems with the French
Revolution, but the Americansvery much want to show that they
are conservative states.
It isn't right in the sense ofleft-right, but they want to say
(18:17):
, in effect, we are the onestrying to protect what the
system has been.
We think that these are whatthe rules have always been.
You guys are the ones trying toprotect what the system has
been.
We think that these are whatthe rules have always been.
You guys are the ones changingit right.
So they want to basicallyposition themselves as the ones
defending traditional Britishliberties, which they're
increasingly justifying as sortof natural liberties, and that
the British government are theones that are making the shift.
(18:39):
They're the ones that are doingthe wrong.
They're the ones that arepushing for a change that hasn't
been, from their perspective,consented to by the British
people, or at least the Britishpeople in these colonies.
I laughed earlier about theburning, the effigy thing, but
there's another reason that itmakes sense to sort of position
(19:00):
the king as increasingly the badguy, because, potentially, if
Parliament is the bad guy.
Parliament is selected by theBritish people and that's an
awkward situation to say at theend the British people are the
bad guys, right, and so that'sanother reason that they're
uneasy about that.
But you know they're quiteexplicit about this in the
Declaration itself.
(19:21):
They talk about the patientsufferance of these colonies.
The history is a history ofrepeated injuries and
usurpations, having in directobject the establishment of an
absolute tyranny over thesestates.
Probably a little overheatedrhetoric there, but they are
right to say this is repeatedinjuries.
And then they say to prove this, let facts be submitted to a
(19:42):
candid world.
So they want to say look, we'remaking the case.
Here's a list of legalindictments.
You can go back and look at thehistory and tell us whether
these are right or wrongpetitions Our British brethren
have been ignoring when theysaid we warned them from time to
time of their attempts by theirlegislature to extend an
(20:09):
unwarrantable jurisdiction overthis, we cited our old charters.
That we did.
We've appealed to their Britishliberties, and so they've
ignored us.
And so the Americans really dowant to say we are the ones
defending what we all thought weagreed on.
We all thought we agreed onthese importance of these
English liberties.
And so we've made our case.
(20:32):
We've tried to make our case,you didn't listen.
From their perspective, theysay we literally have no other
choice left.
We tried to do this through thesystem, but the system is not
responsive, it's not.
Self-government is impossiblein the way that the British are
trying to implement this system.
So they say at that point wehave to reluctantly implement
(20:55):
revolution, not just becauselike, oh well, we lost a, you
know, we lost a vote, so we'reout right.
So this is something we'll talkabout this more in the Civil
War sections, I assume.
Right, lincoln wants to say thisis a fundamental difference
between the American Revolution,which he adores, and
Confederate secession.
He's like look, you guys lostone election and literally
before I've even taken office,you're all saying, oh game,
(21:18):
system's broken, I got to peaceout.
Like, what are you doing atthat point?
Hey, system's broken, I got topeace out.
What are you doing at thatpoint?
So Lincoln very much wants tosay the American revolutionaries
did this right, they werepatient, they were cautious,
they tried to work through thesystem.
The system wouldn't work.
It's not just, basically, welost an election, we're spoiled
and we're storming off, which ishow Lincoln understands
(21:40):
effectively the Confederates andwhy he views them.
Part of why he views them thereare many reasons why he views
them quite negatively, butthat's certainly one of them is
he views it as trying to sort ofbesmirch the American
revolutionaries by, like,wrapping themselves the
Confederates wrapping themselvesin the American revolutionaries
flag.
And Lincoln wants to say theseare fundamentally different.
(22:01):
These are fundamentallydifferent.
The American revolutionarieshad an actual long list of
objections.
You guys just lost one electionand you're gone Now.
That overstates it a little bit, but fundamentally that's where
Lincoln sees the difference.
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