At the closing of the Seven Years War (1756-1763), Parliament and recently corronated King George III sought absolute control over Britain's colonies and looked to America to help pay off debt incurred during the war. The primary function of every British government was to maintain and expand England's seaborne trade. Proponents of the Navigation Acts (beginning in 1651) professed equal benefit for both mother country and her colonies. In reality though, all knew their primary purpose was "to protect Great Britain's flourishing commercial monopoly and to guarantee huge profits to her manufacturers, traders, merchants and bankers" 1.
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These acts, widely ignored throughout the American colonies, heavily restricted and taxed all shipping to and from the Americas to ensure that goods manufactured outside of England were competitively overpriced. In 1760, the "Writs of Assistance" were passed, empowering colonial agents with the authority to search any person, place, or ship suspected of contraband.
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King George III |
Already outraged at the increasingly enforced laws to collect fines and maintain Great Britain's monopolies at the expense of their constitutional rights, American colonists were subjected to a series of additional acts: 1764: The Sugar Act & The Currency Act, 1765: The Quartering Act (requiring colonists to provide room and board for British soldiers) &
The Stamp Act, 1766: the Declaratory Act (announced absolute subordination of all American colonies to Parliament, officially removing any illusion of self-government) 1767: The Townshend Act etc.
With a series of proclamations and laws, King George III and Parliament reinterpreted the British Constitution, making it a living, breathing one to suit their needs, and effectively eliminated many of what was understood both in the Americas and within Britain itself, as the Rights of Englishmen. A few years later, the former American subjects would form their own government based on the notion that all men are, "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", meaning specific, unalterable rights. 2
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Samuel Adams |
"Every natural right not expressly given up, or, from the nature of a social compact, necessarily ceded, remains."
Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists, Nov. 20, 1772
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Benjamin Franklin |
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The proposal in both forms was universally rejected by the colonists, who denied that Parliament had any right to tax them, since they were not represented in that body; it being a fundamental principle of the British Constitution, that no man shall be taxed except by himself or his representatives.
Benjamin Franklins' Autobiography
(testimony to Grenville in England while subpoenaed on the Stamp Act 1765)
"And be it further declared ..., That all resolutions, votes, orders, and proceedings, in any of the said colonies or plantations, whereby the power and authority of the parliament of Great Britain, to make laws and statutes as aforesaid, is denied, or drawn into question, are, and are hereby declared to be, utterly null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever."
The Declaratory Act, March 18, 1766
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Justice Bader Ginsberg |
On the Constitution...
"It's intended to be looked at in the context of contemporary events, in the context of history, in the context of past precedent, and the intent of the framers. Put all those things together and hopefully what you get is the right answer to some perplexing issue that the court is confronting,"
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg
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Justice Scalia |
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On a "living, breathing Constitution"...
"That's the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break. But you would have to be an idiot to believe that. The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says some things and doesn't say other things. Proponents of the living constitution want matters to be decided not by the people, but by the justices of the Supreme Court."
Justice Anton Scalia, May, 2005
1. The War for American Independence (Samuel B. Griffith II, University of Illinois Press, 2002)
2. The Declaration of Independence
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