Did colonists "resign the power of voting" and have no more right to govern themselves than the Cornish people?
Upvote:4
What Samuel Johnson, the king, and parliament all ignored was the fact that the 13 colonies, unlike later 19th century colonies or some 18th century colonies, were not part of, nor totally possessions of, the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Instead they were conceived when created to be miniature Englands where the English settlers would govern themselves with colonial governors as miniature kings and colonial assemblies as miniature parliaments, and owing allegiance to the distant kingdom of England in return for (and to the degree of) English protection from outsiders.
Pennsylvania was still a proprietary colony, and the governor of Pennsylvania in this case was like a viceroy for the proprietor, living in England, who was even more like a miniature and vassal king of Pennsylvania.
They were considered to be fiefs of the kingdom of England, not parts of the kingdom of England and later of Great Britain.
If Queen Elizabeth II and the cabinet and Parliament of the UK tried to give orders to and make laws for independent nations like Canada or Australia that would be considered an illegal usurpation of power. The case of the colonists was not that strong however.
The colonies were clearly not independent nations before 1776-1783. Instead they were dependencies of Great Britain like the Island of Mann or the Channel Islands are dependencies of the United Kingdom today. It should be noted that the Queen of the UK has every legal right to use the title of Queen of France today, since the Channel Islands are parts of the medieval Kingdom of France that were never conquered by the Valois claimants of the Kingdom of France in the 100 years war or by the French Republic.
Or the relationship could be compared to the present relationship between the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the United States.
In any case the colonists visualized the relationship between the colonies and the kingdom of Great Britain as vaguely similar to the later relationship between the states and the Federal government of the United States. They believed that most political powers, such as the power to tax, were reserved for the colonial governments and the Crown had limited and restricted powers over the colonies. The colonists believed that the gradual increase of royal and parliamentary control over the colonies, followed by the rapid increase after the French and Indian War, was a violation of the original terms of the relationship between the colonies and the home country.
More post
- 📝 Were Roman public roads built by private companies?
- 📝 What police department served the Kenwood neighborhood in Chicago in 1907?
- 📝 When did the tilt of the tower of Pisa become seen as a feature instead of a defect?
- 📝 How did the American Civil War help the U.S economy recover from the Panic of 1857 given that civil wars are extremely destructive?
- 📝 Why did Americans give up meat resembling animals?
- 📝 Did Roman women wear underwear? How did it look?
- 📝 Why are the German and French languages so different?
- 📝 What did women wear during the Rashidun era?
- 📝 Why was Iceland not a part of the Danish-Swedish deal in Kiel in 1814?
- 📝 Were there US troops on the WW1 eastern front?
- 📝 Who is on the Nazi 2 Reichsmark coin?
- 📝 Did the Welsh ever call Britain Albion?
- 📝 How did the Romans do division?
- 📝 Racism, or Nationalism, represented in 19th century English Wills?
- 📝 Who was the shepherd that discovered the Gobekli Tepe?
- 📝 Are there historic references to sorcerers and their scrolls?
- 📝 Battles that ended with a disaster for all the parties
- 📝 Were British officers able to return home after the American Revolution?
- 📝 Is there a difference between original 1768-71 and 1968-71 facsimile of 1st edition Encyclopaedia Brittanica
- 📝 What was the UK Constitution in 1776, regarding taxation and representation?
- 📝 What is Lorenzo de' Medici holding in this painting?
- 📝 How pervasive was the idea that we had reached "the end of history" in America during the ninties?
- 📝 Was Buddhism the dominant religion of India for 1 thousand years?
- 📝 Has a food taster ever thwarted an assassination attempt?
- 📝 Was there ever any co-existence solution to peace with Israel that the Arab Palestinian side proposed or said would accept?
- 📝 Why are gliders not used anymore in military operation?
- 📝 Was there a time when it was easier for slaves than citizens to access state-sponsored medical facilities in Ancient Rome?
- 📝 Does the number of legs in the air of a horse statue indicate how its rider died?
- 📝 Did the Nazis identify as being Fascists? How exactly did they view themselves?
- 📝 What does the Vietnamese name "Nguyen" actually mean?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Did colonists "resign the power of voting" and have no more right to govern themselves than the Cornish people?
- 📝 Did the Pope's crossbow and archery bans have any effect?
- 📝 Did the U.S. and Soviet Union have a submarine battle in 1968?
- 📝 Why did Stalin and the Soviet leadership have Leon Trotsky assassinated?
- 📝 Why did the Monitor and Merrimac (aka Virginia) have such radically different designs?
- 📝 How did people say “I have to go to the bathroom” before the bathroom and pipes were common?
- 📝 Apart from the Inuit, and candlefish on the northwest coast, did pre-Columbian America have lamps or candles?
- 📝 Which European countries did not have a revolution in the aftermath of the French Revolution and why?
- 📝 Did more Jews live in Poland than any other country, prior to the Holocaust, because of how Polish laws and people regarded Jews?
- 📝 Did Spain and the Republic of China (Kuomintang) have diplomatic relations between 1931 and 1939? Were they friendly or unfriendly?
- 📝 How have African countries kept the boundaries divided by colonists and countries unified for decades, despite the many ethnical groups and conflicts?
- 📝 How many trucks did Russia and Germany have at the start of Barbarossa?
- 📝 Does Japan have the constitutional and legal right to have its own army or navy?
- 📝 Did the Portuguese and the Spanish have slaves on European soil working for them?
- 📝 Did Americans in the later half of the 18th-century have more freedom in choosing a partner?
- 📝 Why did Empress Elizabeth and Catherine the Great of Russia have such different policies toward Frederick the Great?
- 📝 What alternate north-south supply routes did the Soviet Union have when the Volga and Stalingrad were under attack?
- 📝 During and right after the French Revolution, how did France maintain and operate such a big army all over Europe?
- 📝 How and why did the "Green Gang" hold the balance of power in Shanghai in 1927?
- 📝 What access did people in the Warsaw pact countries have to Western television and radio?
- 📝 Did the USSR have a more positive relationship with France than other west european countries after 1945?
- 📝 Why did Germany have so many important scientists and thinkers around the turn of the 20th century?
- 📝 Did West Russia really have a rock shortage in WW2? And if so, what was the cause?
- 📝 Did the Greeks and Romans use reputational incentives to induce people to pay more tax?
- 📝 When and how did the British Monarchy stop claiming Divine Right
- 📝 Did any nation have a demonstrable qualitative advantage in their soldiers of the 18th century, and how did they achieve this?
- 📝 Why did the Chinese not use military power to force out early Portuguese, Dutch and English trade encroachments?
- 📝 During the WWII, did the German Luftwaffe ever have mixed units of Bf-109s and Me-262s, and if so, which units and/or which airfields?
- 📝 What role did the United States government and major corporations have in controlling dissent and protest starting in the late 1940s?
- 📝 Did humans live more densely in the past, and if so, how much denser?
