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The classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but thet are everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of thought

Bernard Bailyn

That by 1774 the final crisis of the constitution, brought on by political and social corruption, had been reached was, to most informed colonists, evident.
BERNARD BAILYN

Constitution Finals Political
The primary function of a constitution was to mark out the boundaries of governmental powers-hence in England, where there was no constitution , there were no limits (save for the effect of trail by jury) to what the legislature might do.
BERNARD BAILYN

England Limits might
Up and down the the still sparsely settled coast of British North America, groups of men-intellectuals and farmers, scholars and merchants, the learned and the ignorant-gathered for the purpose of constructing enlightened governments.
BERNARD BAILYN

Country Ignorant Men
What were once felt to be defects-isolation, institutional simplicity, primitiveness of manners, multiplicity of religions, weaknesses in the authority of the state-could now be seen as virtues.
BERNARD BAILYN

Multiplicity Reform Simplicity Weakness Weaknesses
Whatever deficiencies the leaders of the American Revolution may have had, reticence, fortunately, was not one of them.
BERNARD BAILYN

Leader May Revolution
Everyone knew that democracy – direct rule by all the people – required such spartan, soul-denying virtue on the part of all the people that it was likely to survive only where poverty made upright behavior necessary for the perpetuation of the race.
BERNARD BAILYN

Democracy People Race
In no obvious sense was the American Revolution undertaken as a social revolution.
BERNARD BAILYN

Obvious Revolution Social
What gave transcendent importance to the aggressiveness of power was the fact that its natural prey, its necessary victim, was liberty, or law, or right.
BERNARD BAILYN

Facts Law Liberty
The full bibliography of pamphlets relating to the Anglo-American struggle published in the colonies through the year 1776 contains not a dozen or so items but over four hundred.
BERNARD BAILYN

Four Struggle Years
At first the relevance of chattel slavery to libertarian ideals was noted only in individual passages of isolated pamphlets.
BERNARD BAILYN

Firsts Libertarian Slavery
Emerging first in the form of denunciations of standing armies in the reign of William III, left an indelible imprint on the “country” mind everywhere in the English-speaking world.
BERNARD BAILYN

English Imprint Speaking Standing World
The categories within which the colonists thought about the social foundations of politics were inheritances from classical antiquity, reshaped by seventeenth century English thought.
BERNARD BAILYN

Foundation Inheritance Social
Defiance to constituted authority leaped like a spark from one flammable area to another, growing in heat as it went.
BERNARD BAILYN

Growing Heat Sparks
Never had Parliament or the crown, or both together, operated in actuality as theory indicated sovereign powers should.
BERNARD BAILYN

Crown Sovereign Together
The classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but thet are everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of thought
BERNARD BAILYN

Literature Revolution World
In England the practice of “virtual” representation provided reasonably well for the actual representation of the major interests of the society, and it raised no widespread objection.
BERNARD BAILYN

Country Interest Practice

The classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but thet are everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of thought

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The classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but thet are everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of thought

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