July 28, 2025 • 19 mins
Dr. Beienberg illuminates how the American Revolution fundamentally began as a constitutional dispute between competing interpretations of British liberty, with each side drawing legitimately different conclusions from the Glorious Revolution of 1688. This sophisticated civil war of ideas centered not on the amount of taxation but on the profound question of where governing authority should properly reside in the British Empire.
• British authorities viewed Parliament as supreme within the Empire, understanding the Glorious Revolution as establishing Parliament's authority over the monarchy
• Americans understood the Glorious Revolution as establishing decentralized power, reinforced by generations of "salutary neglect"
• Colonial documents like the Virginia Resolves and First Continental Congress Declaration claimed "exclusive" authority over internal affairs and taxation
• Early state constitutions consistently affirmed local "police powers" - the authority to govern for health, welfare, safety, and morals
• Edmund Burke and other British figures sympathized with the American constitutional position
• The conflict wasn't simply good versus evil - colonists were divided roughly into thirds supporting revolution, remaining loyal to Britain, or staying neutral
• The Revolution represents a tragedy of two sets of "good guys" with irreconcilable visions of proper constitutional order
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Jonas, from Michigan, and I'm in fifth
grade.
My question is how did theAmericans and British disagree
on the relationship between thecolonies and Great Britain?
That's a really great question.
So we have our expert, DrBeienberg, back to answer that.
Dr Beienberg, what do you think?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
think yeah.
So it's a really good question,because there's a way that I
think that Americans sometimesview the American Revolution as
really one between one groupthat is obviously the good guys
and one group that is obviouslythe bad guys.
Certainly that's the depictionone sees in, say, the dreadful
Mel Gibson film the Patriots,which is a bunch of
mustache-twirling evil Britsslaughtering poor Americans.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
And they also change the ending, because that's not
how it ended.
And they changed many things.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yes, yes, I have some problems with the John Adams
miniseries, but it did on thewhole is, I think, a better take
on these things.
But the Americans and theBritish and it's worth
emphasizing, americans is an oddterm to use at the time,
precisely for what I'm going tosay in just a second, which is
that the American Revolution isin some sense a civil war over a
(01:11):
disagreement about what theBritish Constitution meant.
And this is why, quitestrikingly, one sees many
individuals in Parliament andbeyond that who actually take
the side of the Americans or atleast are quite sympathetic to
their critiques.
So in some sense it's adisagreement, at least at the
beginning, between two differentgroups of people who both
(01:32):
identify as British, about whatBritish liberty ought to mean.
I am ultimately sympathetic tothe American take on that.
I'm not saying the AmericanRevolution was a mistake, but I
don't think that it's fair orright to view the British
necessarily as justfundamentally villainous tyrants
.
And so the disagreementfundamentally was about whether
(01:55):
power in the British Empire wasultimately supposed to be
concentrated in Parliament orsupposed to be decentralized
among different legislatures.
And strikingly, both of theseunderstandings come back from
about 100 years before theAmerican Revolution, in the
so-called Glorious Revolution of1688, which, along with Magna
(02:18):
Carta, which I know will betalked about in another podcast,
is often regarded as one of thesort of formative moments of
British political liberty.
And so in the GloriousRevolution, parliament
effectively chases out the lastof the Stuart monarchs for what
they view as overly centralizingpower in the British monarchy
(02:42):
and they invite in, I guesstechnically, in some sense still
Stuart monarchs, but Williamand Mary.
Mary is the daughter of thedeposed British king, and
William and Mary come and takethe crown with basically a set
of conditions given byParliament.
And those conditions given byParliament are that the British
monarchy going forward will belimited, it will have
(03:04):
constraints set on it, it willnot be like the French.
And so the British understandthe Glorious Revolution to be
about the supremacy ofparliament, which is an elected
branch, over the king in a sense, or at least a balance between
them.
So they understand this isfundamentally about Parliament's
(03:25):
authority to govern and theyagain view Parliament as, in
contrast with, say, the Frenchsystem, right, parliament is
politically elected, even ifthere's some sort of shady
boroughs, but it's fundamentallyabout political communities
voting for things, controllingthings, instead of just being
sort of dictated to from amonarch.
But the Americans have asomewhat different take on the
(03:47):
Glorious Revolution, because oneof the things that the British
king tries to do during thatsame period is basically
collapse many of the coloniesinto one sort of super colony
that could be more easilygoverned from afar.
And so there's, in effect, anAmerican theater to the Glorious
(04:07):
Revolution, which is a BritishCivil War Not that long, but
it's still in some sense a civilwar.
But the American theater isabout chasing out this royally
appointed governor who's tryingto smush the colonies into one
sort of super colony.
And so in a sense, you can seehow the Americans understand the
Glorious Revolution to be aboutdecentralizing power against
(04:31):
what's happening across the pond.
And after that, effectively,there's a period that gets
referred to later as solitaryneglect.
Now, that's a sort of old-timeyword, but basically being left
alone is a good thing, is sortof the way you would.
That's a sort of old timey word, but basically being left alone
is a good thing, is a sort ofthe way you would translate that
to sort of modern English.
The British parliament more orless leaves the colonies alone,
(04:53):
and so, joined with thatunderstanding of the glorious
revolution, the Americans beginto understand the British empire
as one of decentralized power,where they are loyal to the king
and parliament can run foreignpolicy.
But most affairs, most taxing,most sort of local stuff, should
(05:14):
be done by the variouslegislatures.
And so you can see, in a sensethese are both very defensible
interpretations of this gloriousrevolution.
But they're completelyincompatible theoretically.
Is power ultimatelyconcentrated within parliament
or is legislative powerdecentralized throughout the
empire?
There ultimately can only beone answer to that question from
(05:35):
a theoretical sense.
And so over the course of the17th everybody knows the story
the British government is shorton funds, or at least unable.
They're able to pay off theircurrent debts, but they're
concerned that they're not goingto be able to take on
additional debts shouldbasically war reignite.
It's not that they literallycan't pay their old debts, they
(05:55):
can but they're concerned thatif their credit gets bad.
So they're looking foradditional revenue sources in
the wake of the Seven Years' Warwhat the Americans call the
French and Indian War and sothey start putting taxes on
things and the things producedor things that are being sold in
America.
And the Americans freak outabout this, not necessarily
because of the quantity of thetaxes.
(06:17):
I mean, if that were the case,we would have had 100 more
American revolutions by then, bynow.
It's not about the quantity ofthe taxes, but it's because, as
Edmund Burke, who later becomesone of the leading critics of
the French Revolution, he's ahe's a famous parliamentarian
and later a famous politicaltheorist.
Burke says, the Americans arevery invested in this idea of
(06:38):
political liberty.
And quite interestingly he says, and they're always looking in
terms of thinking aboutprecedence If we allow the
government to do this today,what's it going to do tomorrow?
If we allow the government todo this today, what's it going
to do tomorrow?
And so he says they'reconcerned about this implicit
idea of us directly taxing them,that this is going to mean we
can directly exercise all powerover the colonies.
And so, early on, the Americansare protesting this.
(06:59):
So, for example, you can look atthe Virginia Resolves on the
Stamp Act in 1765, in which theysay effectively, raising
revenue is something that isproperly held by the local
governments that it is such afundamental part of politics.
And they describe a phrase, andthe different documents use
(07:20):
slightly different formulations.
Some of them they say thephrase internal polity and
others say police powers, andwhat this means is effectively
the presumptive authority togovern for health, welfare,
safety and morals.
Now, police powers doesn't meanbadge and a nightstick like
police officers today, but itmeans effectively, where does
most governing authority lie?
(07:42):
And so in the Virginia Resolvesand the Stamp Act in 1765, in
the Declaration and Resolves ofthe First Continental Congress
in 1774, which I'll come back to, various state constitutions,
they will repeatedly insist thatthis power is supposed to lie
with the local legislatures.
(08:02):
Another document that actuallyhas this is the Fairfax Resolves
of 1774, which are written byGeorge Mason and signed by
George Washington.
So you can look through thesedocuments in the 1760s and 1770s
where the Americans are saying,in effect, look Britain, you
have legitimate foreign policyauthority to basically stop us
(08:23):
from trading with France.
You want to put tariffs andthings to screw the French.
That's legitimate.
But raising revenue issomething that people's
legitimate representatives cando.
And they say and this cannot bedone by parliament, even if and
several of the documents say,even if we were represented in
parliament, because theyincreasingly have understood
(08:44):
this to be about fundamentallylocal government, where you know
your local problems, aboutfundamentally local government,
where you know your localproblems.
And they say that even if wesent some number of
representatives of there, mostof the people in parliament
would not be able to understandour problems.
The British, by contrast, evenwhen they repeal the Stamp Act,
famously passed the DeclaratoryActs in 1766, where they say
(09:06):
fine, we'll spot you the revenueissue in terms of the dollars,
but we continue to theoreticallyinsist on the unquestioned
authority to govern yourcolonies.
And so I would argue, in effect,this is fundamentally what the
American Revolution is about, atleast at the beginning.
It gets sort of expanded interms of its political theory,
ideas of natural law, but atleast at the beginning it starts
as a disagreement onconstitutionalism.
(09:28):
And so I want to just brieflyread kind of a couple of the
places that you see this.
I've alluded to them before butthe Declaration of Resolves of
the First Continental Congress,which is in some ways I think
the first draft of theDeclaration of Independence.
So it's the First ContinentalCongress, right, we all know the
Second Continental Congress'sDeclaration of Independence.
(09:50):
But they say I'll skip over someof the words here but they say
English colonists are entitledto a free and exclusive Note.
The word exclusive meaning it'snot a shared power but one that
they think is only held by thelocal legislature exclusive
(10:11):
power of legislation in theseveral provincial legislatures,
in all cases of taxation andinternal polity.
Again, this idea of policepowers or basic governing
authority.
Then they say the BritishParliament should be restrained
to the regulation of ourexternal commerce, trade with
France, but excluding every ideaof taxation, internal or
external, for raising a revenue.
So we see that language ofinternal polity there.
(10:31):
But strikingly, if you look atthe state constitutions that are
passed in the 1770s, they saysimilar language.
So the MassachusettsConstitution of 1780 similarly
declares the sole and againexclusive right of a free,
sovereign and independent stateto have every power,
jurisdiction and right notdelegated to the United States
of America.
(10:51):
That gets picked up in NewHampshire's constitution.
You see the same kind oflanguage pop up in the
Pennsylvania and Vermontconstitutions Sole, inherent and
exclusive right of governingand regulating internal police
of the state.
This actually pops up in abouthalf of the state constitutions,
strikingly most of the NewEngland ones and strikingly
(11:13):
relatively few of the southernconstitutions, which I think
also pushes back against thenarrative some people have which
is like federalism and states'rights is effectively just a
rationalization to the south.
I mean it's a clumsy method,but if you were to look at the
state constitutions that declarethis, it arguably points the
other way.
If you were to look at the stateconstitutions that declare this
, it arguably points the otherway, right.
Which is to say, this is such afundamental belief across the
(11:34):
American colonies but it's onethat the British government very
strongly disagrees with.
And eventually the Americanprotests are originally to the
king, saying king, please stopthe parliament from exercising
authority it doesn'tlegitimately have.
And the problem is that GeorgeIII, again as somebody who is
(11:55):
well-versed and believes inBritish constitutionalism, sides
with parliament and says no,this is actually the proper
lesson of the GloriousRevolution that parliament does
have legitimate authority overyou.
So ultimately the AmericanRevolution doesn't end this way
necessarily, but it certainlybegins, at least as a
disagreement between Parliamentand the colonies on whether
(12:16):
power in the British Empire isconcentrated or divided.
And obviously the Americansconclude divided and they
continue that not just in theArticles of Confederation but as
one of the core values of theUS Constitution later.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
So the term salutary neglect is something that's tell
me if this would be right.
So you have a classroom of 13students, right?
They have a teacher.
The teacher does what shethinks she or he thinks is best
for the classroom.
If there's problems within the13 students, they talk to the
(12:51):
teacher and then all of a suddensomebody from the district
office comes in and startstelling them they have to do all
of these things.
Would that be kind of akin towhat was going on right, Like
the classroom was functioningjust right, they were doing
everything they were supposed toand then all of a sudden
somebody from far away comes inand starts telling them they
(13:11):
have to do things.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I think that the lengthy temper I think that's a
good analogy, but I think thatthe particularly important part
is how long it was right.
The British system is very muchbased on this idea of
precedence and practice, and soit's not just you've been left
alone for a couple of months ora couple of years.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
What if it was like since kindergarten and then, all
of a sudden, in 12th grade,they changed all the rules for
you to graduate?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Right.
This is inconsistent with yoursort of entire understanding of
what the world looks like.
So for them, they have threegenerations effectively Three,
three and a half generations ofParliament is governing England.
We're governing ourselves, wehave our charters.
Again, this is one of thereasons this pops up in the
Declaration of Resolves and theDeclaration of Independence,
(13:59):
because they view this as still,fundamentally, we were given
basically self-governingauthority.
But Parliament's basically takeis that was the king.
That's not necessarily bindingon us in the same way, the king
that's not necessarily bindingon us in the same way, Just like
(14:21):
the English Bill of RightsParliament does not view as
binding on itself.
It's a constraint on themonarchy, whereas the Americans
increasingly understand thosenot to be.
In some sense, the Britishunderstand the English Bill of
Rights as almost a separation ofpowers document.
This is a constraint on theking, not really on parliament.
The Americans understand theEnglish Bill of Rights as a
(14:42):
constraint on government, as aconstraint particularly on the
central government.
They have their own charters,their own.
They start spooling up theirown bills of rights, their own
declarations of rights.
So, yeah, so it's basicallyyou've been left alone by the
higher powers you seeminglyforever, for at least as far as
(15:02):
your great, as far as yourgrandfather's time, right, which
is effectively all theinteraction you're going to have
.
Right, two people are going toknow their great grandfathers,
right.
So it's their understanding ofpractice, it's their
understanding of history, it'stheir understanding of the
charters.
So you can see why in theDeclaration and Resolves they go
back and they say in the 1774First Continental Congress,
(15:24):
right, they say yeah, this is aviolation of natural law.
So that's a theme that getssort of picked up and emphasized
in the Declaration ofIndependence, which is more
about kind of a natural lawreasoning than British legal
principles.
British legal principles don'tdisappear from the Declaration
of Independence, but theemphasis flips.
But it's a violation of naturallaw, it's a violation of our
charters and it's a violation ofwhat they understand English
(15:48):
liberty to be.
So it's again a debate aboutwhat English liberty is where
the British want to say most ofthem, about what English liberty
is where the British want tosay most of them, liberty is our
collective government inparliament, which is elected
governing.
That's what's really important.
Is a free people havinggovernment, and the Americans
would agree with all of that.
But they say part of being afree people is your power
(16:09):
actually being distributed.
So it's really just again anactual, I think, good faith
constitutional disagreement.
I think the Americans have thebetter case, as Edmund Burke and
others suggest, but it's notagain the sort of evil mustache
twirling, wig wearing, you knowvillains, red wearing villains,
(16:30):
just out to like pick on poorAmericansicans.
And so this is also why so manyamericans side with the british
right.
The the different historianshave have quibbled over what the
ratio is, is it?
John adams writes?
It's basically 30, 30, 30 atone point, one third, one third,
one third revolutionary, onethird being yes the patriots,
(16:53):
theists, and then the people whoare like whatever.
Right.
Others have disagreed on whatthe numbers are, but there is
fundamentally a tripartite,whether it's equally balanced or
tips the other way.
And this is part of whereCanada gets much of its initial
population from British citizensraised in the colonies who
thought Parliament got thisright.
And so for them.
(17:14):
You know they're hostile to thepatriots and the
revolutionaries because theyview these as effectively
traitors to British liberty,which is weird for us and I
think that they're sort of wrongon the merits.
But it's a very defensible caseand so, you know, there's often
the description that in foreignpolicy there's bad guys and bad
guys.
(17:35):
The fundamental tragedy of theAmerican Revolution in some ways
is that it's two different setsof basically good guys.
I think in some way Again, Idon't mean to be ambivalent or
neutral between them I think theAmericans have a better case.
I'm very sympathetic to Burke'sargument on that and the
historian Jack Green, who werecently had give a talk here,
was actually is this what Iassume is his sort of major last
(17:56):
work he's going to be puttingtogether is going through and
finding internal British lettersand discussions from folks
saying actually the Americanshave this right on the merits.
So I'm really looking forwardto when that book comes out.
But yeah, so it's fundamentallya disagreement about liberty,
which is a good conversation tohave.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
But history is written by the victors, and
since we were the victors, I saywe, because I am currently
benefiting from this.
We like to do that, but it'sagain, like everything else, way
more complicated, yeah.
My name is Jonas, from Michigan, and I'm in fifth
grade.
My question is how did theAmericans and British disagree
on the relationship between thecolonies and Great Britain?
That's a really great question.
So we have our expert, DrBeienberg, back to answer that.
Dr Beienberg, what do you think?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
think yeah.
So it's a really good question,because there's a way that I
think that Americans sometimesview the American Revolution as
really one between one groupthat is obviously the good guys
and one group that is obviouslythe bad guys.
Certainly that's the depictionone sees in, say, the dreadful
Mel Gibson film the Patriots,which is a bunch of
mustache-twirling evil Britsslaughtering poor Americans.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
And they also change the ending, because that's not
how it ended.
And they changed many things.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yes, yes, I have some problems with the John Adams
miniseries, but it did on thewhole is, I think, a better take
on these things.
But the Americans and theBritish and it's worth
emphasizing, americans is an oddterm to use at the time,
precisely for what I'm going tosay in just a second, which is
that the American Revolution isin some sense a civil war over a
(01:11):
disagreement about what theBritish Constitution meant.
And this is why, quitestrikingly, one sees many
individuals in Parliament andbeyond that who actually take
the side of the Americans or atleast are quite sympathetic to
their critiques.
So in some sense it's adisagreement, at least at the
beginning, between two differentgroups of people who both
(01:32):
identify as British, about whatBritish liberty ought to mean.
I am ultimately sympathetic tothe American take on that.
I'm not saying the AmericanRevolution was a mistake, but I
don't think that it's fair orright to view the British
necessarily as justfundamentally villainous tyrants
.
And so the disagreementfundamentally was about whether
(01:55):
power in the British Empire wasultimately supposed to be
concentrated in Parliament orsupposed to be decentralized
among different legislatures.
And strikingly, both of theseunderstandings come back from
about 100 years before theAmerican Revolution, in the
so-called Glorious Revolution of1688, which, along with Magna
(02:18):
Carta, which I know will betalked about in another podcast,
is often regarded as one of thesort of formative moments of
British political liberty.
And so in the GloriousRevolution, parliament
effectively chases out the lastof the Stuart monarchs for what
they view as overly centralizingpower in the British monarchy
(02:42):
and they invite in, I guesstechnically, in some sense still
Stuart monarchs, but Williamand Mary.
Mary is the daughter of thedeposed British king, and
William and Mary come and takethe crown with basically a set
of conditions given byParliament.
And those conditions given byParliament are that the British
monarchy going forward will belimited, it will have
(03:04):
constraints set on it, it willnot be like the French.
And so the British understandthe Glorious Revolution to be
about the supremacy ofparliament, which is an elected
branch, over the king in a sense, or at least a balance between
them.
So they understand this isfundamentally about Parliament's
(03:25):
authority to govern and theyagain view Parliament as, in
contrast with, say, the Frenchsystem, right, parliament is
politically elected, even ifthere's some sort of shady
boroughs, but it's fundamentallyabout political communities
voting for things, controllingthings, instead of just being
sort of dictated to from amonarch.
But the Americans have asomewhat different take on the
(03:47):
Glorious Revolution, because oneof the things that the British
king tries to do during thatsame period is basically
collapse many of the coloniesinto one sort of super colony
that could be more easilygoverned from afar.
And so there's, in effect, anAmerican theater to the Glorious
(04:07):
Revolution, which is a BritishCivil War Not that long, but
it's still in some sense a civilwar.
But the American theater isabout chasing out this royally
appointed governor who's tryingto smush the colonies into one
sort of super colony.
And so in a sense, you can seehow the Americans understand the
Glorious Revolution to be aboutdecentralizing power against
(04:31):
what's happening across the pond.
And after that, effectively,there's a period that gets
referred to later as solitaryneglect.
Now, that's a sort of old-timeyword, but basically being left
alone is a good thing, is sortof the way you would.
That's a sort of old timey word, but basically being left alone
is a good thing, is a sort ofthe way you would translate that
to sort of modern English.
The British parliament more orless leaves the colonies alone,
(04:53):
and so, joined with thatunderstanding of the glorious
revolution, the Americans beginto understand the British empire
as one of decentralized power,where they are loyal to the king
and parliament can run foreignpolicy.
But most affairs, most taxing,most sort of local stuff, should
(05:14):
be done by the variouslegislatures.
And so you can see, in a sensethese are both very defensible
interpretations of this gloriousrevolution.
But they're completelyincompatible theoretically.
Is power ultimatelyconcentrated within parliament
or is legislative powerdecentralized throughout the
empire?
There ultimately can only beone answer to that question from
(05:35):
a theoretical sense.
And so over the course of the17th everybody knows the story
the British government is shorton funds, or at least unable.
They're able to pay off theircurrent debts, but they're
concerned that they're not goingto be able to take on
additional debts shouldbasically war reignite.
It's not that they literallycan't pay their old debts, they
(05:55):
can but they're concerned thatif their credit gets bad.
So they're looking foradditional revenue sources in
the wake of the Seven Years' Warwhat the Americans call the
French and Indian War and sothey start putting taxes on
things and the things producedor things that are being sold in
America.
And the Americans freak outabout this, not necessarily
because of the quantity of thetaxes.
(06:17):
I mean, if that were the case,we would have had 100 more
American revolutions by then, bynow.
It's not about the quantity ofthe taxes, but it's because, as
Edmund Burke, who later becomesone of the leading critics of
the French Revolution, he's ahe's a famous parliamentarian
and later a famous politicaltheorist.
Burke says, the Americans arevery invested in this idea of
(06:38):
political liberty.
And quite interestingly he says, and they're always looking in
terms of thinking aboutprecedence If we allow the
government to do this today,what's it going to do tomorrow?
If we allow the government todo this today, what's it going
to do tomorrow?
And so he says they'reconcerned about this implicit
idea of us directly taxing them,that this is going to mean we
can directly exercise all powerover the colonies.
And so, early on, the Americansare protesting this.
(06:59):
So, for example, you can look atthe Virginia Resolves on the
Stamp Act in 1765, in which theysay effectively, raising
revenue is something that isproperly held by the local
governments that it is such afundamental part of politics.
And they describe a phrase, andthe different documents use
(07:20):
slightly different formulations.
Some of them they say thephrase internal polity and
others say police powers, andwhat this means is effectively
the presumptive authority togovern for health, welfare,
safety and morals.
Now, police powers doesn't meanbadge and a nightstick like
police officers today, but itmeans effectively, where does
most governing authority lie?
(07:42):
And so in the Virginia Resolvesand the Stamp Act in 1765, in
the Declaration and Resolves ofthe First Continental Congress
in 1774, which I'll come back to, various state constitutions,
they will repeatedly insist thatthis power is supposed to lie
with the local legislatures.
(08:02):
Another document that actuallyhas this is the Fairfax Resolves
of 1774, which are written byGeorge Mason and signed by
George Washington.
So you can look through thesedocuments in the 1760s and 1770s
where the Americans are saying,in effect, look Britain, you
have legitimate foreign policyauthority to basically stop us
(08:23):
from trading with France.
You want to put tariffs andthings to screw the French.
That's legitimate.
But raising revenue issomething that people's
legitimate representatives cando.
And they say and this cannot bedone by parliament, even if and
several of the documents say,even if we were represented in
parliament, because theyincreasingly have understood
(08:44):
this to be about fundamentallylocal government, where you know
your local problems, aboutfundamentally local government,
where you know your localproblems.
And they say that even if wesent some number of
representatives of there, mostof the people in parliament
would not be able to understandour problems.
The British, by contrast, evenwhen they repeal the Stamp Act,
famously passed the DeclaratoryActs in 1766, where they say
(09:06):
fine, we'll spot you the revenueissue in terms of the dollars,
but we continue to theoreticallyinsist on the unquestioned
authority to govern yourcolonies.
And so I would argue, in effect,this is fundamentally what the
American Revolution is about, atleast at the beginning.
It gets sort of expanded interms of its political theory,
ideas of natural law, but atleast at the beginning it starts
as a disagreement onconstitutionalism.
(09:28):
And so I want to just brieflyread kind of a couple of the
places that you see this.
I've alluded to them before butthe Declaration of Resolves of
the First Continental Congress,which is in some ways I think
the first draft of theDeclaration of Independence.
So it's the First ContinentalCongress, right, we all know the
Second Continental Congress'sDeclaration of Independence.
(09:50):
But they say I'll skip over someof the words here but they say
English colonists are entitledto a free and exclusive Note.
The word exclusive meaning it'snot a shared power but one that
they think is only held by thelocal legislature exclusive
(10:11):
power of legislation in theseveral provincial legislatures,
in all cases of taxation andinternal polity.
Again, this idea of policepowers or basic governing
authority.
Then they say the BritishParliament should be restrained
to the regulation of ourexternal commerce, trade with
France, but excluding every ideaof taxation, internal or
external, for raising a revenue.
So we see that language ofinternal polity there.
(10:31):
But strikingly, if you look atthe state constitutions that are
passed in the 1770s, they saysimilar language.
So the MassachusettsConstitution of 1780 similarly
declares the sole and againexclusive right of a free,
sovereign and independent stateto have every power,
jurisdiction and right notdelegated to the United States
of America.
(10:51):
That gets picked up in NewHampshire's constitution.
You see the same kind oflanguage pop up in the
Pennsylvania and Vermontconstitutions Sole, inherent and
exclusive right of governingand regulating internal police
of the state.
This actually pops up in abouthalf of the state constitutions,
strikingly most of the NewEngland ones and strikingly
(11:13):
relatively few of the southernconstitutions, which I think
also pushes back against thenarrative some people have which
is like federalism and states'rights is effectively just a
rationalization to the south.
I mean it's a clumsy method,but if you were to look at the
state constitutions that declarethis, it arguably points the
other way.
If you were to look at the stateconstitutions that declare this
, it arguably points the otherway, right.
Which is to say, this is such afundamental belief across the
(11:34):
American colonies but it's onethat the British government very
strongly disagrees with.
And eventually the Americanprotests are originally to the
king, saying king, please stopthe parliament from exercising
authority it doesn'tlegitimately have.
And the problem is that GeorgeIII, again as somebody who is
(11:55):
well-versed and believes inBritish constitutionalism, sides
with parliament and says no,this is actually the proper
lesson of the GloriousRevolution that parliament does
have legitimate authority overyou.
So ultimately the AmericanRevolution doesn't end this way
necessarily, but it certainlybegins, at least as a
disagreement between Parliamentand the colonies on whether
(12:16):
power in the British Empire isconcentrated or divided.
And obviously the Americansconclude divided and they
continue that not just in theArticles of Confederation but as
one of the core values of theUS Constitution later.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
So the term salutary neglect is something that's tell
me if this would be right.
So you have a classroom of 13students, right?
They have a teacher.
The teacher does what shethinks she or he thinks is best
for the classroom.
If there's problems within the13 students, they talk to the
(12:51):
teacher and then all of a suddensomebody from the district
office comes in and startstelling them they have to do all
of these things.
Would that be kind of akin towhat was going on right, Like
the classroom was functioningjust right, they were doing
everything they were supposed toand then all of a sudden
somebody from far away comes inand starts telling them they
(13:11):
have to do things.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I think that the lengthy temper I think that's a
good analogy, but I think thatthe particularly important part
is how long it was right.
The British system is very muchbased on this idea of
precedence and practice, and soit's not just you've been left
alone for a couple of months ora couple of years.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
What if it was like since kindergarten and then, all
of a sudden, in 12th grade,they changed all the rules for
you to graduate?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Right.
This is inconsistent with yoursort of entire understanding of
what the world looks like.
So for them, they have threegenerations effectively Three,
three and a half generations ofParliament is governing England.
We're governing ourselves, wehave our charters.
Again, this is one of thereasons this pops up in the
Declaration of Resolves and theDeclaration of Independence,
(13:59):
because they view this as still,fundamentally, we were given
basically self-governingauthority.
But Parliament's basically takeis that was the king.
That's not necessarily bindingon us in the same way, the king
that's not necessarily bindingon us in the same way, Just like
(14:21):
the English Bill of RightsParliament does not view as
binding on itself.
It's a constraint on themonarchy, whereas the Americans
increasingly understand thosenot to be.
In some sense, the Britishunderstand the English Bill of
Rights as almost a separation ofpowers document.
This is a constraint on theking, not really on parliament.
The Americans understand theEnglish Bill of Rights as a
(14:42):
constraint on government, as aconstraint particularly on the
central government.
They have their own charters,their own.
They start spooling up theirown bills of rights, their own
declarations of rights.
So, yeah, so it's basicallyyou've been left alone by the
higher powers you seeminglyforever, for at least as far as
(15:02):
your great, as far as yourgrandfather's time, right, which
is effectively all theinteraction you're going to have
.
Right, two people are going toknow their great grandfathers,
right.
So it's their understanding ofpractice, it's their
understanding of history, it'stheir understanding of the
charters.
So you can see why in theDeclaration and Resolves they go
back and they say in the 1774First Continental Congress,
(15:24):
right, they say yeah, this is aviolation of natural law.
So that's a theme that getssort of picked up and emphasized
in the Declaration ofIndependence, which is more
about kind of a natural lawreasoning than British legal
principles.
British legal principles don'tdisappear from the Declaration
of Independence, but theemphasis flips.
But it's a violation of naturallaw, it's a violation of our
charters and it's a violation ofwhat they understand English
(15:48):
liberty to be.
So it's again a debate aboutwhat English liberty is where
the British want to say most ofthem, about what English liberty
is where the British want tosay most of them, liberty is our
collective government inparliament, which is elected
governing.
That's what's really important.
Is a free people havinggovernment, and the Americans
would agree with all of that.
But they say part of being afree people is your power
(16:09):
actually being distributed.
So it's really just again anactual, I think, good faith
constitutional disagreement.
I think the Americans have thebetter case, as Edmund Burke and
others suggest, but it's notagain the sort of evil mustache
twirling, wig wearing, you knowvillains, red wearing villains,
(16:30):
just out to like pick on poorAmericansicans.
And so this is also why so manyamericans side with the british
right.
The the different historianshave have quibbled over what the
ratio is, is it?
John adams writes?
It's basically 30, 30, 30 atone point, one third, one third,
one third revolutionary, onethird being yes the patriots,
(16:53):
theists, and then the people whoare like whatever.
Right.
Others have disagreed on whatthe numbers are, but there is
fundamentally a tripartite,whether it's equally balanced or
tips the other way.
And this is part of whereCanada gets much of its initial
population from British citizensraised in the colonies who
thought Parliament got thisright.
And so for them.
(17:14):
You know they're hostile to thepatriots and the
revolutionaries because theyview these as effectively
traitors to British liberty,which is weird for us and I
think that they're sort of wrongon the merits.
But it's a very defensible caseand so, you know, there's often
the description that in foreignpolicy there's bad guys and bad
guys.
(17:35):
The fundamental tragedy of theAmerican Revolution in some ways
is that it's two different setsof basically good guys.
I think in some way Again, Idon't mean to be ambivalent or
neutral between them I think theAmericans have a better case.
I'm very sympathetic to Burke'sargument on that and the
historian Jack Green, who werecently had give a talk here,
was actually is this what Iassume is his sort of major last
(17:56):
work he's going to be puttingtogether is going through and
finding internal British lettersand discussions from folks
saying actually the Americanshave this right on the merits.
So I'm really looking forwardto when that book comes out.
But yeah, so it's fundamentallya disagreement about liberty,
which is a good conversation tohave.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
But history is written by the victors, and
since we were the victors, I saywe, because I am currently
benefiting from this.
We like to do that, but it'sagain, like everything else, way
more complicated, yeah.
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