Grievances Against a King

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

Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum!

School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Key Colonial Complaints Against Britain

Speaker 1 0:47

Hi , my name is Annie , I'm from Alabama and I'm a sophomore and I want to know what were some of the colonists key complaints against King George , the third in the parliament , to kind of answer the question about some of the key complaints , the grievances against King George III and Parliament , which makes up a really large portion of the Declaration of Independence . So , dr Birenberg , can you tell us a little bit about what some of those key complaints against King George and Parliament were ?

Speaker 2 1:27

Sure . So there's a , as I sorry , delete that .

Speaker 1 1:38

You're fine . I was recording the section . One thing and it took me like five or six tries because I kept tripping over my words and then getting dry mouth or the dog would bark or I would sneeze . It was a mess . Dog would bark or I would sneeze it was a mess .

Speaker 2 1:51

So , as you identified , I think quite rightly , and as I tell my students , the striking thing about the Declaration of Independence is , you know , there's a very famous sort of opening with the philosophical discussions , you know when , in the course of human events , but particularly that we hold these truths to be self-evident in the paragraph . But the bulk of the Declaration of Independence is actually in some sense almost a legal indictment . Count one , count two , count three , all of the things that they are charging the British government with doing wrong , and I think it was really also apt to note that sort of in popular conception it's come to be basically primarily blamed on King George . But if you look under the hood and also in the earlier draft versions , parliament is , if anything , an equal or greater participant . I mean , one of the things that I think is striking is that King George is not George III , is not a sort of absolutist monarch in the sense of Louis XIV France . This doesn't mean that I'm saying like the American Revolution was a mistake , he was the good guy , etc . But King George very much viewed himself as a participant in the English political project and English political liberty . He was effectively the first British monarch to be sort of raised in England and sort of culturated in this . So you know he was not just sort of issuing arbitrary edicts but working with parliament in a lot of stuff .

Speaker 2 3:22

A patriot king is often what he was , could have kind of conceived of himself as , and many of the most aggressive assertions of sovereignty weren't coming from King George , but they were in fact coming from Parliament . That one of the legacies of and I'll talk more about this in one of the other sessions but one of the legacies of English colonial or English history in the 17th and 18th centuries was the supremacy of parliament in many ways over the monarch . So parliament was effectively asserting its own sovereignty over the British empire and the earlier drafts of the Declaration of Independence were more explicit about blaming parliament and the earlier messages sent from the colonists back to Britain were almost always blaming Parliament primarily . They often took the tone of King George , please save us from the wicked Parliament . Like we are loyal to you in our understanding of the empire , parliament is the one breaking stuff . So we'll talk more about that .

Speaker 2 4:26

But in the final version King George does end up being primarily the one who's blamed for things and , as I tell my students , there are sort of , I think , pretty obvious political reasons for why that is . It's much more , it's much easier to burn King George in effigy than Parliament . Like , what are you going to do ? Like build this elaborate Westminster thing right now ? You're not going to do that . Like build this elaborate Westminster thing , right ? No , you're not going to do that . So King George just sort of ends up being the personification of this .

Speaker 2 5:00

But the list of the charges , you can break them up into a few things . I would say the primary set of objections are to the loss of self-government by the colonies . One of the themes that I think is quite striking and I'll elaborate on this , I think , in a later podcast is that in some ways the American Revolution is an English Civil War , about a discussion of where politics , where power , is primarily supposed to be housed in parliament or distributed . And so if you look at the first distributed among the colonies , I should say , or no more among the local kind of governments . So if you look at the first few objections in the Declaration of Independence , they're lamenting that the king has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public , that is to say that the colonies are passing laws in their local governments and the king and his counselors are declining them . He's forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance .

Speaker 2 5:59

Again , that is effectively a reiteration of the same count .

Parliament vs. King in Colonial Grievances

Speaker 2 6:03

He's refused to pass laws for the accommodation of districts of large people unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature . He's basically trying to coerce them to give up their local legislative power . Next count he's called together legislative bodies at places unusual and uncomfortable and distant from the depository of the public records right . He's making the legislature meet , in weird ways , the local legislatures . He's dissolved representative houses repeatedly . He's refused to cause others to be elected , and so on and so forth .

Speaker 2 6:33

So there's , this real concern that the British government , in this case specifically King George , but that the British government is effectively making it impossible for the colonists to govern themselves . He's literally closing down the Massachusetts legislature , and so they recognize this , because the Americans understand this ability of a free people to elect their lawmakers is what , in some sense , they understand the core of being a free people is about , even more so than a civil liberties claim or something like that . You know a civil liberties claim or something like that that being able to the political liberty in the sense of a group of people being able to shape their own destiny through the legislature , is what they think being free is about in some sense .

Speaker 1 7:21

So can I ask a question really quick ? Is this something that happens like all at once , or is this something that had been happening and kind of just built up to a point where you know we have now we have this list of grievances that have been going on for a while ?

Speaker 2 7:36

Yeah , so that one has been sort of building up , so building up for about 10 years , 10 years or more . So effectively , the British government has been passing the various taxes Stamp Act , you know about all those and the Americans would complain and say this needs to be sort of a local thing . To be sort of a local thing , um , and sort of back and forth . Often the british government would end up sort of backing off the tax but then sort of asserting the sovereignty , and then this kept getting pushed and , pushed and pushed and then eventually the americans , uh , in the you know , 1774 , 75 , start saying like no , we are not going to do this , um , and the america the british government again , not unreasonably eventually decides that the Americans are in a state of rebellion , and so they start imposing again fairly draconian policies like closing the legislature . And so if the Americans that sort of has vindicated what they've been saying , which is that the British government is conspiring to take away our local government , it's hard to deny that literally having your local government closed down is not sort of the example of what they've been sort of worried about for a while . So the actual , the actual , sort of real biting charges is stuff that's only happened in the last couple of years , but it's building on themes that the Americans and the British have been sort of going back and forth and squabbling about for about a decade . So the local government , again that's one we'll talk more about , but that's a really core one and it's much more explicit in the earlier 1774 Declaration of Resolves . But you also see a lot of other objections that I think are striking insofar as they anticipate things that the Americans care about in the Constitution , which is why you know there are some people in American history that have tried to say that the Declaration and the Constitution are really separate , or the Constitution is a betrayal of the Declaration , and I just don't think that that's a fair read . If you look at the list of objections that are being raised in the Declaration now , most of them get translated in some ways into the Constitution , right . So you have a lot of concern .

Speaker 2 9:49

Again , the Americans are people who care about liberty and the rule of law , and so one of the things that I always point out to my students is you have several sections discussing sort of problems with the judiciary , problems with the implementation of justice . So again we have a he's obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers . So there's a protest that the king isn't building the proper court system , but then one that I think is really important he has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries . That's literally ends up being translated into the US Constitution later on , and the Americans have a pretty good case to protest this , because this had been one of the lessons of the English Civil War and building afterward , which is that the king should not be able to control judges .

Speaker 2 10:44

And so in 1701 , in the act of settlement , sort of in the kind of clean up and end game of the Glorious Revolution which the Americans look back on as this , in some sense they look back on this as the inspiration for their own revolution .

Speaker 2 11:00

That this was when a free British people asserted their British liberties . But one of the things that the British government recognizes the monarch recognizes the monarch , I guess I'd say the joint monarchs at that point is that the judges need to be

Loss of Self-Government and Local Authority

Speaker 2 11:15

independent , in the sense that they can't get pushed around and have their salaries tweaked , and so they pass a law , but it only applies in England , and so this is understood as an English right , but it's one that technically 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 have viewed as important for almost a century at this point arguably longer , if you want to think about sort of the endgame of the English Civil War 50 years before that and that's not being given to us . They would say this is English liberty .

Speaker 1 11:50

So that's a really core objection .

Speaker 2 11:52

They think that the court system is not operating fairly , it's not doing the rule of law , it's basically becoming a pawn of the British government . Not unreasonably . That shows up in the US Constitution as something that needs to be fundamentally guarded against making sure that this judicial independence happens .

Speaker 1 12:11

You see discussion and it shows up in the Federalist Papers too , like a lot of what you're talking about and again there will be podcast episodes on that but a lot of what you're talking about with the independent judiciary it's in Federalist 70 , right . A lot of these founders took what is in there and immediately were talking about it and making sure about . Taking away at the local government is the importance of that that you know our parliament is an ocean away . It's not easy to get to , it's not easy to have these conversations , as it would be to go down to your local government or to a local town hall . So the loss of that for colonists , would it be fair to say it almost feels like a loss of just government in general .

Speaker 2 13:05

Yeah , I mean that's right . So I'll talk more about this when we talk about sort of what the real fundamental disagreement is between Parliament and the colonists . But yeah , it's worth noting that they say , not only because there's some discussion , like , well , maybe we could just have a seat in Parliament , but you're not going to be ableruled by numbers , most likely , but you're also just not going to be able to , as you said , really connect with , understand these problems , and so , yeah , so this taxation without representation is not , which ends up being sort of the rallying cry .

Speaker 2 13:43

Representation isn't just going to be sort of token . You know we've got somebody here to complain about this in Westminster isn't just going to be sort of token . You know , we've got somebody here to complain about this in Westminster . The idea really is and this shows up in lots of documents that at the time that , as you said , I think quite nicely , they understand local government in a sense to be government itself , so you need to be basically able to understand the problems of your society , able to understand these and able to sort of communicate with people who have similar sets of problems and circumstances . And so you know they will often just describe it as self-government .

Speaker 2 14:20

But if you really have a sense of what their ideas are about , the self-government is inseparable from the local government for them , which is why you know to this day the American constitutional order is so decentralized , like that is a deep legacy that comes from the American Revolution itself . So that's absolutely , that's absolutely right , and you see that continue to pop up again in some of the other objections . So they protest he's kept among us in times of peace standing armies without the consent of our legislatures right , which suggests that the standing armies would in fact be okay if our local legislatures had approved of it . You know , and they go on to say that he's combined with others to subject us others , meaning parliament here to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution , unacknowledged by our laws , giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation . So again protesting that basically parliament is asserting uh authority here , but so many of the other objections you know , quartering large bodies of soldiers among us , basically just depriving us of trial by jury .

Speaker 2 15:30

These end up being placed not only in the state constitutions but eventually in the US Constitution and its bill and its bill of rights . So so the objections I think are , you know , there's some of them that seem much more temporally limited , to sort of the specific kind of objections of the time , but really the core of them is things like he is taking away our local government , they're taking away our charters , suspending our legislatures , making sure that we don't have a functioning and fair court system , making sure we don't have English liberties like trial by juries . So really , these are the Americans saying it in its core um , not only these rights that we particularly think of as core British liberties , uh , but in some sense what we think of as like the , the , the , the proper workings of government itself , um , so it's not just

Judicial Independence and English Liberty

Speaker 2 16:24

uh , and so you can see that the sort of the philosophical parts uh really actually do dovetail with the sort of the philosophical parts uh really actually do dovetail with the sort of list of objections , right , that , um , that they think that governments need to be able to be responsive , right , you see this in the beginning sections . Um , you see that the idea that they take self-government seriously , they take the idea of losing in politics seriously , so they don't just say , well , we didn't our way , so we're storming out immediately , but that the British system , which they fundamentally think is a free system I mean , this is one of the things that is somewhat hard for Americans to get around .

Speaker 2 17:00

But until very , very late in the process they view themselves as loyal British citizens and the critique is British government , follow , I was going to say , your rules . But they say our rules , like follow the system that we have come to believe in , and they say our constitution . There's no formal British constitution 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 liberties have been for decades or centuries , for decades or centuries . And you , british Parliament , slash King , are no longer living up to those and you're not responding when we ask you to live up to those . So we don't have any choice but to leave , because you're not dealing with the objections we're raising and have been raising .

Speaker 1 17:42

So why do you think it was so important to have this long list of grievances ? You hit on it a little bit , but I mean we're talking about the bulk of this document being these grievances and obviously I'm sure there were more , because you can't list everything . But why do you think it was so important for Jefferson and the other authors to actually go through and make this list ? Because the . Declaration is not a governing document right . Like , but we see that it influences so many things , so why this long list ?

Speaker 2 18:19

Yeah , I mean they're , they're trying they recognize . I mean , revolution is a big deal . Revolution throws you back into the state of nature . In a sense , it destroys institutions that are important , like , uh , in terms of maintaining law and order , right , so revolution is dangerous and not something to be taken uh lightly , and so they're very explicit about that and later on .

Speaker 2 18:41

This is where people , you know , have discussions about what's the difference between the american revolution and the french revolution . Um , that's not to downplay the sets of problems with the French Revolution , but the Americans very much want to show that they are conservative states . It isn't right in the sense of left-right , but they want to say , in effect , we are the ones trying to protect what the system has been . We think that these are what the rules have always been . You guys are the ones trying to protect what the system has been . We think that these are what the rules have always been . You guys are the ones changing it right . So they want to basically position themselves as the ones defending traditional British liberties , which they're increasingly justifying as sort of natural liberties , and that the British government are the ones that are making the shift . They're the ones that are doing the

The Conservative Nature of Revolution

Speaker 2 19:27

wrong . They're the ones that are pushing for a change that hasn't been , from their perspective , consented to by the British people , or at least the British people in these colonies . I laughed earlier about the burning , the effigy thing , but there's another reason that it makes sense to sort of position the king as increasingly the bad guy , because , potentially , if Parliament is the bad guy . Parliament is selected by the British people and that's an awkward situation to say at the end the British people are the bad guys , right , and so that's another reason that they're uneasy about that . But you know they're quite explicit about this in the Declaration itself . They talk about the patient sufferance of these colonies . The history is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations , having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states . Probably a little overheated rhetoric there , but they are right to say this is repeated injuries . And then they say to prove this , let facts be submitted to a candid world . So they want to say look , we're making the case . Here's a list of legal indictments . You can go back and look at the history and tell us whether these are right or wrong petitions Our British brethren have been ignoring when they said we warned them from time to time of their attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over this , we cited our old charters .

Speaker 2 20:59

That we did . We've appealed to their British liberties , and so they've ignored us . And so the Americans really do want to say we are the ones defending what we all thought we agreed on . We all thought we agreed on these importance of these English liberties . And so we've made our case . We've tried to make our case , you didn't listen . From their perspective , they say we literally have no other choice left . We tried to do this through the system , but the system is not responsive , it's not . Self-government is impossible in the way that the British are trying to implement this system . So they say at that point we have to reluctantly implement revolution , not just because like , oh well , we lost a , you know , we lost a vote , so we're out right . So this is something we'll talk about this more in the Civil War sections , I assume .

Speaker 2 21:51

Right , lincoln wants to say this is a fundamental difference between the American Revolution , which he adores , and Confederate secession . He's like look , you guys lost one election and literally before I've even taken office , you're all saying , oh game , system's broken , I got to peace out . Like , what are you doing at that point ? Hey , system's broken , I got to peace out . What are you doing at that point ?

Speaker 2 22:12

So Lincoln very much wants to say the American revolutionaries did this right , they were patient , they were cautious , they tried to work through the system . The system wouldn't work . It's not just , basically , we lost an election , we're spoiled and we're storming off , which is how Lincoln understands effectively the Confederates and why he views them . Part of why he views them there are many reasons why he views them quite negatively , but that's certainly one of them is he views it as trying to sort of besmirch the American revolutionaries by

Patient Sufferance vs. Confederate Secession

Speaker 2 22:39

, like , wrapping themselves the Confederates wrapping themselves in the American revolutionaries flag . And Lincoln wants to say these are fundamentally different . These are fundamentally different . The American revolutionaries had an actual long list of objections . You guys just lost one election and you're gone Now . That overstates it a little bit , but fundamentally that's where Lincoln sees the difference .