In The Last King of America, Andrew Roberts defends George III and he takes what is in my view a firm swipe at the hypocrisy of the colonists at the time of the Declaration  of Independence and its apologists since.

I have set out before my views on the subject in the book A Tale of Two Nations.

When American nationalism reaches a peak, which it does from time to time, when Americans become suffused with the glow of their own patriotism, some might remember that Dr. Johnson regarded the Tea Party as ‘theft and hooliganism’ for which he uttered his famous maxim:  ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.’  When TV historians rhapsodise over the American Declaration of Independence, they are making a conscious effort to put behind them the limitations of the European Enlightenment of the 18^th century.  There was not, of course, a woman in sight.  This was a show for men only, and wealthy establishment men at that – men who could subscribe to the Tory view that a nation is best governed by those who have a stake in the nation.  The Founding Fathers were anything but advocates of democracy.  The very idea would have been as vulgar as it was unsound.

But, above all, the Declaration was of, by, and for, white men, and not men of any other colour.  Opinions were asserted in 1776 that would find no place in America more than two hundred years later.  We have seen that the Indians were written off as savage mass murderers:  ‘He [King George III] has incited domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.’  This is a dismissal of an entire people by reference to race, and whatever else might be said of Indian war-making, they did not have the same means for dealing out death that their enemies had – they were for the most part just trying to protect their own people and land; and no one could ever accuse the Indians of genocide. 

The reference – or, as the Declaration was issued, the lack of reference – to African Americans is no better.  Jefferson had drafted a clause making the fatuous suggestion that the English – well, they said King George III – had instituted a trade of slavery, frustrated attempts to stop it, and then excited the blacks to rise up against ‘us’ – who were by definition white.  All this is expressed in the most colourful language:  ‘He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the person of a distant people who never offended him.’  ‘This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king ….He has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce ….’  And so on.  Mercifully, Congress struck all this nonsense out.  But they left as it was the phrase ‘all men are created equal’ and that statement was, to their certain knowledge, untrue. 

Well, this evasion, if that is the term, on the subject of slavery might be expected from a slave-owner from the largest slave-owning state.  But what was not to be expected was the lack of candour on the causes of the revolt.

The American Declaration of Independence follows the form of the English Declaration of Rights.  It records the conduct complained of to justify the termination of the relationship.  (This is what lawyers call ‘accepting a repudiation’ of a contract.)  The English did so in short, crisp allegations that were for the most part devoid of oratorical colour in the Declaration of Rights. The allegations are expressed in simple enough terms and were not phrased so as to encourage an evasive form of denial. 

How does the American Declaration of Independence go about this process?  Before it gets to an allegation that the king maintains standing armies, which is a relatively specific charge, it made ten allegations of misconduct that were so general that they would not be permitted to stand today as an allegation of a breach of the law on a conviction for which a person might lose their liberty.  The fourteenth allegation, which is hopeless, but which appears to be an attempt to invoke the English precedent, is that:  ‘He [King George III] has abdicated government here.’  Then there is the fifteenth allegation:  ‘He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.’  If that allegation of plunder and murder – the old word was ‘rapine’ – had been seriously put, you might have expected to see it before an allegation of abdication – and before every other allegation.  The eighteenth allegation relates to the Indians. The nineteenth was the allegation relating to slavery and which was struck out.  Those drafting the Declaration were not evidently keen to get down to the subject of people of another race.  Or tax.

Let us put to one side that all these allegations are made against the Crown, and not the government, and that none of these allegations refers to any statute of the British government.  There is no history of the American Revolution that has been written that says that the American colonies revolted from their subjection to the British crown for any of the reasons that are set out in the eighteen clauses of the Declaration of Independence.  The primary reason that history gives for the revolt of the colonists was the imposition, or purported imposition, of taxes upon them by the British parliament – when those being taxed had no direct representation in the parliament levying the tax.  Most divorces are about money, and this one was no different. 

But British taxation is only mentioned once in the Declaration of Independence.  That reference is fallacious.  It is against the King.  The Glorious Revolution made it plain that he could not impose a tax.  The only reference to the English legislature comes when those drafting the documents scold the English for ‘attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us’.  Given that the 1688 revolution secured the supremacy of the English parliament over the English Crown and made it transcendentally clear that only the English parliament could levy a tax on its subjects, it may have seemed a little odd for Jefferson to be suggesting that the American colonies were somehow subject to the English Crown, but not to the English parliament.  ‘Jurisdiction’ is a word that has come to bedevil American jurisprudence, and it looks like the problem may have started very early.

The American Declaration of Independence is therefore of limited historical value in explaining why the American colonies proceeded as they did, or what values of humanity they proposed to pursue for their future. The tragic truth is that the barefaced lie about slavery would haunt the young republic until it was expunged by the death of more than six hundred thousand Americans in the Civil War and by the moral courage and intellectual genius of Abraham Lincoln, the one unquestionable gift of the United States to humanity.

Roberts says that ‘of the twenty-eight charges [in the Declaration], only two really stand in terms of logic, natural law, chronology or politics – namely, the seventeenth, about imposing taxes without the colonists’ consent, and the twenty-second, about Parliament being ‘invested with the power to legislate for us’ [which it undoubtedly was] – yet those two were so important that they went to the heart of the issue, and justified the whole rebellion on their own.’ 

The author say that while taxation may have been the excuse for rebellion, the real reason was that the colonists thought they were ready, willing and able to govern themselves.  The Civil War would, to put it softly, suggest that they were wrong.

So far as I can see, the author does not deal with the fact that George III on his own had no power to levy tax on the colonies.  That was the whole issue of the Glorious Revolution, and Jefferson used the Bill of Rights as a template for his Declaration. 

But Mr Roberts does refer to an observation of Sir Lewis Namier, whom I regard as the ultimate authority on the governance of the empire then.  I will set it out.

This junction between the King and Parliament of Great Britain was by itself bound to carry the supremacy of the British Parliament into the Colonies; and the very fact that George III so thoroughly and loyally stood by the constitutional principles of the time rendered a conflict inevitable – had he entertained any idea of power or authority apart from the British Parliament, he might have welcomed the conception of a separate sovereignty in the Colonies.  The necessary limitations to the authority of the British Parliament, a territorial assembly, were not as yet understood.

Well, there you are.  A nation so conceived – the phrase is Lincoln’s – was bound to run into serious trouble.  Which it has now done – twice, at least.

The issue can I think be formulated as a question.  Which of the following do you think is the lowest?  Ted Cruz.  Lindsey Graham. Jim Jordan.  Mitch McConnell.  Mike Pence.  Donald Trump.