Up and down the the still sparsely settled coast of British North America, groups of men-intellectuals and farmers, scholars and merchants, the learn….

In effect the people were present through their representatives, and were themselves, step by step and point by point, acting in the conduct of publi….

Never had Parliament or the crown, or both together, operated in actuality as theory indicated sovereign powers should..

What were once felt to be defects-isolation, institutional simplicity, primitiveness of manners, multiplicity of religions, weaknesses in the authori….

The ideas that the colonists put forward, rather than creating a new condition of fact, expressed one that has long existed; they articulated and in ….

The primary function of a constitution was to mark out the boundaries of governmental powers-hence in England, where there was no constitution , ther….

What Americans were really objecting to had nothing to do with constitutional principles. their objection was not to Parliament's constitutional righ….

Whatever deficiencies the leaders of the American Revolution may have had, reticence, fortunately, was not one of them..

In England the practice of "virtual" representation provided reasonably well for the actual representation of the major interests of the society, and….

Instantly available without continuous presence is probably the best role a mother can play..

The idea of sovereignty current in the English speaking world of the 1760's was scarcely more than a century old. It had first emerged during the Eng….

It was an elevating, transforming vision: a new, fresh, vigorous, and above all morally regenerate people rising from the obscurity to defend the bat….

The full bibliography of pamphlets relating to the Anglo-American struggle published in the colonies through the year 1776 contains not a dozen or so….

What gave transcendent importance to the aggressiveness of power was the fact that its natural prey, its necessary victim, was liberty, or law, or ri….

The classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but thet are everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of tho….

The wielders of power did not speak for it, nor did they naturally serve it. Their interest was to use and develop power, no less natural and necessa….

The fact that the ministerial conspiracy against liberty had risen from corruption was of the utmost importance to the colonists..

That by 1774 the final crisis of the constitution, brought on by political and social corruption, had been reached was, to most informed colonists, e….

Incorporating in their colorful, slashing, superbly readable pages, the major themes of the "left" opposition under Walpole, these libertarian tracts….

The theory of politics that emerges from the political literature of the pre-Revolutionary years rests on the belief that what lay behind every polit….

Everyone knew that democracy - direct rule by all the people - required such spartan, soul-denying virtue on the part of all the people that it was l….