British Parliament

Thomas Paine’s account of the British Parliament moves from a claim of colonial grievance to a rejection of parliamentary authority and, finally, to a proposed alternative. Parliament is not an isolated institution in this argument: its power is bound to the British Crown, its claims over the colonies, and the political dependence Paine urges America to end.

Parliament and the Colonial Grievance

Paine begins by arguing that prolonged abuses of power prompt people to question the legitimacy of that power. Because the King of England has undertaken to support Parliament in what it claims as its own right, the colonists, whom Paine describes as gravely oppressed by their combination, are entitled to examine the claims of both and reject the usurpation of either. Parliament’s authority is thus placed under the same scrutiny as royal power, not treated as a settled right merely because it is customary.

The imperial relationship also shapes Paine’s account of the conflict’s change in character. Before hostilities began on April 19, proposals on both sides ultimately aimed at union with Great Britain, though one side proposed force and the other friendship. Paine says that the use of arms has made those earlier plans obsolete: force has failed, while the influence of reconciliation has withdrawn. Parliament’s rule therefore belongs to a political arrangement that the conflict has rendered newly questionable, rather than to a relationship that can simply be repaired by returning to its former terms.

A Distant and Unworkable Authority

Paine argues that Britain cannot administer justice to the American continent because its affairs are too weighty and intricate for a power so distant and so ignorant of local conditions. He depicts the machinery of appeal as an extended delay: colonists might travel three or four thousand miles with a petition, wait four or five months for an answer, and then spend five or six more explaining it. A process once considered proper, he argues, has reached the point at which it should cease.

The distance is not merely a practical inconvenience. Paine contrasts a small island that might reasonably fall under a kingdom’s protection with a continent supposedly governed from across the ocean, calling the latter arrangement contrary to nature. He assigns England to Europe and America to itself, using geography to reinforce his claim that the two belong to different political systems. Continued dependence, in this view, makes the colonies a weight in British politics and draws them into European conflicts with nations against which they otherwise have no complaint.

Parliament in Paine’s Critique of the English Constitution

Paine also attacks the complexity of the English constitution, in which he identifies hereditary monarchical and aristocratic elements alongside republican materials in the Commons. Because the first two are hereditary and independent of the people, he argues, they contribute nothing to the state’s freedom in a constitutional sense. His broader criticism is that a complicated arrangement obscures responsibility: a nation may suffer for years without knowing which part of the constitution is at fault, while rival political advisers prescribe different remedies.

The claim that the constitution’s powers check one another becomes, for Paine, a contradiction rather than a safeguard. The Commons can check the King by withholding supplies, but the King can in turn reject the Commons’ other bills. This structure appears to presume first that the Commons are wiser than the Crown, and then that the Crown is wiser than the Commons. Parliament is therefore both an institution presented as a restraint on monarchy and one whose legislative work remains subject to royal veto. Paine treats that reciprocal arrangement as evidence of constitutional absurdity, not balanced government.

Representation and the Proposed Continental Alternative

Paine’s alternative begins from the principle that representation must remain answerable to the people it serves. In his proposed system, colonial assemblies would meet annually, have a president only, and handle domestic affairs under the authority of a Continental Congress. Each colony would be divided into six, eight, or ten districts, with at least thirty delegates sent by each colony, producing a Congress of at least 390 members.

He proposes a rotating method for choosing the Congress’s president: a colony would be selected by lot, and Congress would choose the president by ballot from that colony’s delegates. The colony would be omitted from the next selection, with the rotation continuing until all thirteen had taken their turn. He further proposes that no measure become law without the support of at least three-fifths of Congress. These provisions aim to distribute authority among the colonies and make the proposed legislature continental in character.

Paine would have the constitutional initiative arise through an intermediate Continental Conference, joining congressional members, representatives of colonial assemblies or conventions, and delegates chosen by the people. He assigns this body the task of framing a Continental Charter that would define how Congress and assemblies were chosen, when they sat, and where their jurisdictions began and ended. The charter would secure freedom, property, and the free exercise of religion according to conscience. Unlike the British arrangement Paine criticizes, this proposed framework locates political authority in an agreed charter and representative institutions rather than hereditary power and distant rule.

A Test of Representation and Political Independence

Paine’s concern about representation is grounded in a specific Pennsylvania example. When the Associators’ petition came before the provincial Assembly, only twenty-eight members were present; eight Bucks County members voted against it. Paine observes that had seven Chester members joined them, two counties alone could have governed the whole province. He also objects to the Assembly’s attempt to impose instructions on the province’s delegates after those instructions had been approved by only a very few people outside the chamber. The episode illustrates his warning that both a small electorate and a small or unequal body of representatives can concentrate power beyond the public’s control.

He distinguishes the expedient arrangements made during an emergency from the institutions appropriate to lasting government. Appointing people from the separate assemblies to consult had been a timely measure that helped preserve the continent from ruin, but a Congress likely to continue indefinitely required a better method of selection. Paine asks whether it is too much power for one body to control both representation and election, and insists that plans for posterity cannot rely on virtue passing by inheritance.

The case for independence also depends on the diplomatic consequences of remaining subjects of Britain. While America continued to claim that status, Paine argues, other powers could not mediate between the parties as they might between nations at war. France or Spain would have little reason to assist if the purpose were merely to repair and strengthen Britain’s connection with America; and foreign governments would see armed resistance under the name of British subjects as a dangerous contradiction. An open declaration of independence, accompanied by an account of colonial grievances and a pledge of peaceful trade, could therefore do more for America abroad than another petition to Britain. In Paine’s argument, rejecting Parliament’s authority is inseparable from establishing the political standing needed to negotiate with other nations.