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 BAILYNThe classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but thet are everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of thought
More Bernard Bailyn Quotes
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What Americans were really objecting to had nothing to do with constitutional principles. their objection was not to Parliament’s constitutional right to levy certain kinds of taxes as opposed to others, but to its effort to collect any.
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The most powerful presentations were based on legal precedents, especially Calvin’s Case (1608), which, it was claimed, proved on the authority of Coke and Bacon that subjects of the King are by no means necessarily subjects of Parliament.
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At first the relevance of chattel slavery to libertarian ideals was noted only in individual passages of isolated pamphlets.
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Not only by Americans themselves but by enlightened spokesmen of reform, renewal and hope wherever they may be-in London coffeehouses, in Parisian salons, in the courts of German princes.
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The theory of politics that emerges from the political literature of the pre-Revolutionary years rests on the belief that what lay behind every political scene, the ultimate explanation of every political controversy, was the disposition of power.
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Instantly available without continuous presence is probably the best role a mother can play.
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It was an elevating, transforming vision: a new, fresh, vigorous, and above all morally regenerate people rising from the obscurity to defend the battlements of liberty and then in triumph standing forth, heartening and sustaining the cause of freedom everywhere.
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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.
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Never had Parliament or the crown, or both together, operated in actuality as theory indicated sovereign powers should.
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The fact that the ministerial conspiracy against liberty had risen from corruption was of the utmost importance to the colonists.
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The wielders of power did not speak for it, nor did they naturally serve it. Their interest was to use and develop power, no less natural and necessary than liberty but more dangerous.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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