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.
BERNARD BAILYNInstantly available without continuous presence is probably the best role a mother can play.
More Bernard Bailyn Quotes
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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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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.
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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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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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The categories within which the colonists thought about the social foundations of politics were inheritances from classical antiquity, reshaped by seventeenth century English thought.
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Whatever deficiencies the leaders of the American Revolution may have had, reticence, fortunately, was not one of them.
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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.
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Incorporating in their colorful, slashing, superbly readable pages, the major themes of the “left” opposition under Walpole, these libertarian tracts.
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Instantly available without continuous presence is probably the best role a mother can play.
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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 idea of sovereignty current in the English speaking world of the 1760’s was scarcely more than a century old. It had first emerged during the English Civil War, in the early 1640’s, and had been established as a canon of Whig political thought in the Revolution of 1688.
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Defiance to constituted authority leaped like a spark from one flammable area to another, growing in heat as it went.
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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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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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In effect the people were present through their representatives, and were themselves, step by step and point by point, acting in the conduct of public affairs. No longer merely an ultimate check on government, they were in some sense the government.
BERNARD BAILYN