July 12, 2006

Sometimes I Feel Like I'm Being Baited
Everett

Annatar, what possible relevance could the comparative standards of living in Boston and London have in determining whether or not the English Parliament had the right to levy taxes upon the the American colonies? The major issue underlying the Revolutionary War was the question of whether Parliament had the authority to pass laws governing territories not represented in Parliament. If you accept the notion that legitimate government governs with the consent of the governed, the answer is clearly no. Because the colonists had no representation in Parliament, the colonists can not have been said to have consented to be governed by Parliament, and thus Parliament had no right to pass laws governing the colonies.

Furthermore, from the establishment of the first American colonies up until after the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War in Europe), the colonies were essentially self-governing. When England sought to tighten its control over the colonies, it was overturing traditions of governance that had sttod since the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

It is also absurd to ascribe expansionist tendencies in Colonial America entirely, or even largely, to wealthy landowners. Westward expansion was not fuelled by the unchecked greed of an insidious upper class, but largely by landless pioneers seeking to make their fortunes in the vast untamed wilderness of the American Midwest and beyond.