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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.

Bernard Bailyn

The fact that the ministerial conspiracy against liberty had risen from corruption was of the utmost importance to the colonists.
BERNARD BAILYN

Corruption Facts Liberty
Incorporating in their colorful, slashing, superbly readable pages, the major themes of the “left” opposition under Walpole, these libertarian tracts.
BERNARD BAILYN

Army Country Mind
In no obvious sense was the American Revolution undertaken as a social revolution.
BERNARD BAILYN

Obvious Revolution Social
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
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
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
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
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.
BERNARD BAILYN

Effort Kind Principles
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.
BERNARD BAILYN

Liberty People Vision
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
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.
BERNARD BAILYN

Based Kings Legal Mean Powerful Proved
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
Whatever deficiencies the leaders of the American Revolution may have had, reticence, fortunately, was not one of them.
BERNARD BAILYN

Leader May Revolution
At first the relevance of chattel slavery to libertarian ideals was noted only in individual passages of isolated pamphlets.
BERNARD BAILYN

Firsts Libertarian Slavery
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
Never had Parliament or the crown, or both together, operated in actuality as theory indicated sovereign powers should.
BERNARD BAILYN

Crown Sovereign Together

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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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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Popular Authors

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