Linc9393 (@Linc9393)

This episode reveals that the Declaration of Independence was not a sudden American Invention but the culmination of a ling British constitutional tradition. Beginning with the Magna Carter (1215) and continuing through the Petition of Rights (1628), Habeas Corpus Act (1679), and the Glorious Revolution (1688) with its English Bill of Rights (1689). Britain developed a political culture build on due process, limited monarchy and consent of the governed. Thinkers such as Locke (1689), Sidney (1698) and the authors of the Cato Letters (1720-1723) gave colonists a vocabulary that justified resistance to tyranny. By 1776, the colonists believed that Parliament had violated the very rights Englishmen fought for in 1642, 1688, and after. The Declaration was not a break from Britain-it was the colonists’ claim to be true heirs of Britain’s own constitutional revolution. https://againstthethrong.substack.com/p/declaration-of-independence-a-british