The Evidence of the Common and Statute Laws of the Realm; Usage, Records, History, with the Greatest and Best Authorities Down to the 3d of George the 3rd, in Proof of the Rights of Britons Throughout the British Empire Addressed to the People
- Anonymous Pamphleteer 1775 (author)
- Jack P. Greene (collection editor)
This essay presents one of the strongest responses to the claim of Parliamentary supremacy over the colonies. It is indicative of a robust revival of Old Whig ideas in England on the question of limited government, a revival that began with the Stamp Act in the 1760s and reached a highpoint in 1775. In this text the author draws from a long legal history to assert that all powers of government receive “their binding force from the sufferance, consent, and acquiescence of the people at large.”
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The text of these 18th century pamphlets has been converted by machine from scanned PDFs of the original microfilm copies. While the text has been machine-proofed, transcription errors may still remain. For example, the 18th-century long S, ſ , may be rendered as “f,” some words may be incorrectly transcribed, and there may be repeated words or phrases.