England

England is portrayed not simply as the colonies’ former political connection, but as the source of a double problem: a constitution in which the crown can dominate representative government, and an imperial relationship that draws America into conflicts and decisions made across the Atlantic. The text contrasts England’s compromised political order with a proposed continental alternative, arguing that separation must be accompanied by institutions capable of securing representation, rights, and public authority.

The English Constitution and the Crown

The text challenges the pride Englishmen take in government by king, lords, and commons. Though individuals in England may be safer than in some other countries, it argues, the king’s will can still become the law of the land, delivered not directly but through the formidable form of an act of Parliament. The execution of Charles the First, in this account, taught kings to act more subtly rather than more justly. The distinction between England and France is therefore presented as one of procedure, not a guarantee that royal power has ceased to govern.

The crown’s influence rests on its control of offices and pensions. Because it can distribute places, the crown is described as the heaviest power in the constitutional machine: other parts may slow its movement, but cannot ultimately stop it. England may have shut and locked the door against absolute monarchy, yet, in the text’s image, it has left the crown holding the key. Political forms alone cannot secure liberty when one power can bend the institutions meant to restrain it.

The text identifies the House of Commons as the republican part of England’s constitution, since people can choose its members from among themselves. Yet the crown’s patronage is said to have swallowed the Commons’ power and eaten away its virtue, leaving the government nearly as monarchical as those of France or Spain. On this account, England’s constitutional sickness results from monarchy poisoning the republic: what Englishmen rightly value is the representative element, but that element is vulnerable when royal influence captures it. The relative restraint of the crown is attributed not to the government’s design but to the character of the people, a distinction that warns against mistaking a people’s habits for a sound constitution.

The account also reduces the king’s practical business in England to making war and giving away places. These activities, it argues, impoverish the nation and set its people against one another, even as the king receives an annual allowance of eight hundred thousand pounds sterling and is worshipped. The contrast is deliberately sharp: one honest person is said to be worth more to society and in God’s sight than all crowned rulers. England thus serves as a warning that inherited rank and public expense do not establish political usefulness.

From Imperial Connection to Separation

The book places England within a political break accelerated by hostilities. Before the nineteenth of April, advocates of force and advocates of friendship differed over how to preserve union with Great Britain; once arms had been taken up, those earlier proposals were likened to last year’s almanacs. The change is not merely a shift in tactics. The conflict has altered the political question itself, making the old goal of union seem superseded by a new era in which the connection must be judged anew.

The argument rejects the claim that America’s past prosperity proves its future dependence on England is necessary. It compares that reasoning to insisting that a child who thrived on milk should never eat meat, or that the first twenty years of life should dictate the next twenty. America, it maintains, could have prospered as much or more without European control; its trade in necessities would find a market wherever people eat. The contrast turns the past from proof of permanent dependence into an inadequate precedent for a changed political future.

Ancestry, too, is denied as a basis for continued allegiance. Even if all the colonists were of English descent, the text argues, that would establish nothing; Britain’s position as an open enemy extinguishes the force of the name. Its reductio points to the French origin of William the Conqueror and the French descent of half the English peers: by the same logic, England should be governed by France. The example exposes the weakness of using ancestry to justify authority over a people.

The text’s geographical argument makes the political mismatch visible. Small islands unable to protect themselves may properly come under the care of kingdoms, but it calls it absurd for a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. Nature, it says, does not make the satellite larger than its primary planet; England and America reverse that order and therefore belong to different systems, England to Europe and America to itself. The image gives physical distance political force, presenting separation as a correction to an arrangement that runs against the scale and independence of the continent.

Distance also makes English government impractical. Britain, the text argues, cannot do justice to America because colonial affairs are too weighty and intricate to be managed conveniently by a power so far away and so ignorant of local conditions. The practical burdens are specified: a petitioner might travel three or four thousand miles, wait four or five months for a reply, and then require five or six more months to explain it. A procedure that may once have been proper becomes, with changed circumstances, folly and childishness. Its time has come to cease.

Dependence is also presented as a danger to peace. Because America’s market is Europe, the text urges the continent to avoid partial political ties with any European power. While tied to Britain, America is made a counterweight in British politics and drawn into European wars; whenever England fights a foreign power, American trade suffers. Separation would allow America to seek friendship and commerce broadly rather than inherit Britain’s quarrels. The claim is not that the continent should challenge the world, but that its commercial interests and neutrality offer a more secure course than service to an imperial power.

The book dismisses reconciliation as a prospect that has already failed in practice. Quiet methods and prayers, it says, have been met with disdain; repeated petitioning has instead strengthened royal vanity and obstinacy. The repeal of the Stamp Act did not prevent a later renewal of conflict, so assurances that Britain will not attempt it again are treated as wishful thinking. Because Britain has shown no inclination to compromise on terms worthy of the continent, a temporary repair would leave the next generation to fight again. The writer presents separation not as pride, party spirit, or resentment, but as a conscientious judgment of the continent’s interest; anything short of it is patchwork that leaves the sword to the children.

A Continental System of Government

The case for independence is paired with a proposal for government. The assemblies would meet annually under a president, handle domestic business, and remain subject to a Continental Congress. Each colony would be divided into six, eight, or ten districts, each sending delegates to Congress; each colony would send at least thirty, producing a Congress of at least 390 members. The large scale is intended to give the several parts of the continent representation in a shared political body rather than leave common affairs to a distant government.

The proposed presidency is designed to rotate among the colonies. At each Congress, a colony would be selected by lot, and the delegates would choose a president by ballot from that colony’s delegation. At the next Congress the previous colony would be excluded from the drawing, with the rotation continuing until all thirteen colonies had had their turn. The proposal also sets a demanding threshold for legislation: at least three-fifths of Congress must count as a majority. Rotation and a supermajority are offered as safeguards against allowing a single province or a narrow faction to dominate continental government.

To establish the arrangement, the text proposes an intermediate Continental Conference between Congress and the people. Its membership would include twenty-six members of Congress, two from each colony; two members from each House of Assembly or Provincial Convention; and five representatives of the people at large from each province. Those popular representatives would be chosen by qualified voters meeting in the provincial capital or town, or, where more convenient, in two or three populous places. The design brings together political experience and authority granted by the people: existing representatives contribute knowledge of public affairs, while the conference’s broader authorization supplies a legal basis for its work.

The Conference would frame a Continental Charter, compared with England’s Magna Carta. It would set the number and method of choosing members of Congress and the assemblies, specify their terms, and divide their business and jurisdiction. The charter would bind the whole to defend the rights of each part, securing freedom and property and, above all, the free exercise of religion according to conscience. Once the charter was completed, the Conference would dissolve; the bodies chosen under it would then serve as the continent’s legislators and governors. The proposal makes constitutional design the bridge between independence and stable self-government, while insisting that continental strength, rather than provincial fragmentation, must guide the structure.

Representation, Rights, and the Authority of Law

The case for a new constitution is reinforced by a warning about small and unequal representation. In Pennsylvania, when the Associators’ petition came before the Assembly, only twenty-eight members were present. Eight members from Bucks County voted against it; had seven members from Chester County joined them, two counties alone could have governed the whole province. The example turns representation from an abstract principle into a concrete vulnerability: a small attendance and uneven distribution of power can allow a limited group to decide for everyone.

The text further criticizes the Pennsylvania Assembly for trying to claim undue authority over the province’s delegates. Instructions described as deficient in both sense and practical judgment were approved by only a very few people outside the house, then passed as though they spoke for the whole colony. The episode supports the wider demand that people should not surrender political power to a body whose decisions may rest on narrow participation. A temporary expedient may be useful in an emergency, but its convenience does not make it a just permanent rule.

The crown’s place in England also sharpens the proposed distinction between monarchy and law. In the imagined public ceremony proclaiming the charter, the document would be placed on the word of God and crowned, expressing the principle that in a free country the law ought to be king. But the crown used in the ceremony would then be demolished and scattered among the people, whose right it represents. The image redirects political reverence away from a ruler and toward a public law that is to bind power rather than embody it in one person.

This institutional argument treats rights as obligations owed across the whole political community, not as favors granted by a distant ruler. A charter is described as a solemn bond by which the whole agrees to support the rights of every separate part, whether those rights concern religion, personal freedom, or property. The proposed settlement therefore answers England’s constitutional failures and the problem of imperial distance with both a different source of authority and a defined commitment to protect individuals and communities.

Independence and International Standing

Independence is presented as a condition for conducting diplomacy, not merely a declaration of separation from England. While America calls itself Britain’s subject, other powers cannot mediate its conflict as they might between two nations at war. The text argues that the continent may consequently quarrel on indefinitely: its stated status blocks outside powers from treating it as an independent party to a dispute.

The same status undermines the prospect of assistance from France or Spain. Those powers would have little reason to help America, the text says, if their aid were intended only to repair the breach and strengthen the connection between Britain and America. As long as the colonies profess allegiance to Britain while taking up arms, foreign governments are also likely to regard them as rebels. Resistance and subjection may coexist in the colonists’ own understanding, but the combination is too refined a paradox for common diplomatic recognition.

A public manifesto, by contrast, could explain the suffering endured, the peaceful efforts made without success, and the necessity of breaking all connections with the British court. It could also assure foreign courts of America’s peaceful intentions and desire to trade with them. The text expects such a memorial to do more for the continent than a shipload of petitions sent to Britain, because a declaration of independence would allow America to be received and heard abroad as a political entity in its own right.

The end of the argument is a change in political habit. Steps that first seem strange and difficult, the text predicts, will soon become familiar and agreeable. Until independence is declared, the continent resembles someone repeatedly postponing an unpleasant task while knowing it must be done: the delay does not remove the necessity but keeps it present. In this account, England’s significance lies in the full range of the problem it represents: constitutional power that has overwhelmed representation at home, imperial authority that cannot administer a continent justly, and a connection that prevents America from acting openly among nations. Separation is the proposed answer, but continental government, protected rights, and diplomatic recognition are what would make that separation politically consequential.