The Declaration of Independence's 27 Grievances, Explained

You don’t need me to gush over the American Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson’s achievement has already been praised to high heaven by more lyrical writers than me, after all, over the last 250 years.

One element that the Declaration is often praised for is its timelessness, principally in the famous second paragraph. All men are created equal. Unalienable Rights. Life, Liberty and the the pursuit of Happiness. A perfect distillation of the liberal-individualist principle that individual humans are sovereign and autonomous, only joining into society and constituting government for their mutual benefit. The statement of the Lockean principle of the right to rebellion under circumstances of intolerable oppression.

So timeless, indeed, that these principles have long after been interpretated as the goals America should strive towards even all these years later. They are the American mission statement, perfect and eternal.

And then that paragraph ends. What follows — the majority of the Declaration — is a list of 27 grievances that are decidedly not timeless, but instead are deeply and singularly of their time, laying out specifically what the British government (personified in George III) has done to meet the threshold required to allow rebellion against legally constituted authority. Worse, for the modern reader, so many of them talk around the specific grievance, withholding context because, at the time, no context was needed. So today, in preparation for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration, let’s add that context back in.

Under the British legal system, bills do not become law until they are signed by the monarch, called royal assent. In Britain itself, this theoretical veto was largely abandoned after the 1688 Glorious Revolution, with the last monarch to ever use it being Queen Anne in 1708, over the Scottish Militia Bill. (And even this was on the advice of her own ministers, after they changed their mind on the bill due a planned Jacobite rebellion and French invasion of Scotland.)

Over in the American colonies, however, the monarchs continued to actively use their veto. Vetoing, unthinkable in Britain, was commonplace in the colonies, to the immense frustration of the colonists. Not only were their bills regularly vetoed, but they also had to wait months for messages to travel over the Atlantic twice before they could learn whether or not they had been permitted to place their own laws on their own books.

A continuation of the first grievance, Jefferson is saying that colonial governors should have been allowed to at least provisionally carry out colonial laws while the king’s consent was sought. However, George would not allow that and, furthermore, is alleged by Jefferson to have made no effort to quickly deal with colonial bills put before him, though there’s not much evidence for this. All of this prevented the colonies from quickly responding to important events through their own legislatures.

As the colonies grew, new settlements sprung up. Though colonial charters differed, most allowed such settlements, once recognised, to send elected representatives to the colonial legislature. Massachusetts, for example, let every town send two representatives to its general court; a typical arrangement.

In the years leading up to the revolution, however, the king exercised his veto to prevent the incorporation of new towns so as to limit the size of the legislatures and thereby the number of colonists with representation in them. New towns would only be recogised if they gave up their right of representation, which was intolerable to the colonists as it framed representation as a privilege rather than a right.

This mostly refers to Massachusetts, the hotbed of the early revolution. After the 1770 Boston Massacre, the governor ordered the Massachusetts general court to meet at Cambridge rather than Boston, hoping that they would be easier to control when outside the hands of the radical Bostonian patriots. Something similar occurred in South Carolina in 1772, when the governor ordered a new assembly to meet at Beaufort rather than Charleston.

Fairly self-explanatory, various colonial assemblies were dissolved during the crises leading up to the revolutionary war. Massachusetts, of course, and New York for a time, but soon all assemblies that agreed to send representatives to the First Continental Congress were ordered to dissolve. Though the governors and royal government had hoped to call new, more pliable assemblies, these acts only forced the assemblies into rebellion.

Contains both some history and an important liberal principle. The history is self-evident and once again applies mostly to Massachusetts and New York: that, after the assemblies were dissolved, new ones weren’t convened in an attempt to muzzle the colonies, and in doing so leaving them without a legislature. New York’s was the result of the New York Restraining Act 1767, part of the Townshend Acts.

The principle is more interesting: the idea (Rousseauaian, I’d argue, though there’s some Locke in there too) that a people must always have a legislature and so, if the executive refuses to allow one, the people retain the right to constitute a new one against the will of the executive. The idea that power, if vacated, is assumed by the people and theirs to invest where they wish is at the heart of the legal-theoretical justification of the 1688 Glorious Revolution. King James II, it was said, abandoned the country and thereby abdicated the throne, allowing Parliament to grant it to William III. All the American and British political leaders of this time were highly versed in that earlier revolution and so this was Jefferson using the language of 1688 — a revolution celebrated and accepted in Britain — to justify 1776.

Naturalisation was an expensive and bespoke process in the 18th century, requiring a naturalisation bill to pass through the legislature. Fearing the effects of more colonial residents having full citizenship rights — including voting rights — the crown instructed colonial governors to veto all naturalisations starting in 1773.

Beyond naturalisation, the colonists wished to expand further inland and expand their settlements. The royal government, as it increasingly conflicted with the colonies, began to oppose this, wanting to limit the colonies both in size and scope. There were no real laws against migration at the time but, as the grievance makes clear, the colonists wanted the royal government to go further and actually encourage increased migration, particularly from Germany. In this regard, the royal government not only feared larger and more powerful colonies, but also that those migrants would have no loyalty to the British crown, making them more likely to side with the patriots.

The reference to new lands meant the idea of expanding westward. Some royal officials even thought that colonial settlements should be limited to the coast, where they would be easier to control. This is also the first oblique reference to the indigenous Indian nations, whose territories the British protected by treaty. The British refusal to allow encroachments into the lands of allied nations was a notably less noble motivation for some Americans to turn against the king and royal government.

We’ve discussed the king’s use of veto powers already, and this restatement of it merely serves to show that the royal government had abdicated not just legislative power but judicial power too.

Historically, judges’ salaries were paid by the colonies. In 1772, the royal government decided that judges in Massachusetts would instead be paid directly by the crown, which many colonists felt would unduly prejudice judges towards the king. In response to this, John Adams drew up articles of impeachment against Chief Justice Peter Oliver, arguing that he had taken a royal bribe. The general court voted for the impeachment, but the governor refused to remove him.

The patriots rallied around this issue, which they believed was a royal attempt to create a compliant pro-royal judiciary. You can see this concern in the judiciary of America today, where judges must be confirmed by the legislature, which also pays their salaries.

The attempts to tax America in the 1760s, particularly the Stamp Act 1765, required new royal tax collectors. These were sent from Britain and paid for out of the new American taxes. Hence, not only were the Americans taxed without representation, but they were also being asked to accommodate these new officials. Officials who were the representatives of another government, who had to be housed and fed, and were the ultimate authorities on the implementation of the new taxes.

The quartering of troops, a grievance so large it made its way into the Bill of Rights. That America needed a standing army to defend it was considered obvious after the Seven Years War. The attempt to make the colonists pay for this army through new taxes imposed from Britain was the beginning of the whole revolution.

However, those troops themselves became more controversial as, after 1770 in Boston, it became increasingly clear that they could be used not just against foreign enemies but also against domestic rebellions. At this time, after all, there is no real distinction between military and police: both local militias and standing armies would keep the peace as well as fighting in combat.

Britain had never had a large standing army. Britain was a naval power, after all. Attempts by King Charles I to raise an army to put down a Scottish rebellion (which Parliamentarians feared would be used against them) was the trigger of the English Civil Wars back in the 1640s and, ever since, Britain had kept its army small and considered this to be a guarantee of its rights against potentially tyrannical monarchical authority.

Hence, again with their intimate knowledge of the 17th century struggle between crown and parliament, the patriots also saw a large standing army as an inherent threat to liberty. Armies should be raised and quartered amongst the people only in times of war and the purse strings should be held by the legislature, as was the case in Britain. This idea would be influential post-independence, not only in the Bill of Rights as previously mentioned, but also in keeping the standing federal army comparatively small for decades.

If there had to be an army, it should be under the control of the legislature and governments. The British army in America was neither and, furthermore, the royal government increasingly opted for the appointment of British military officers into the position of colonial governor as the crisis worsened, placing the colonial governments under the power of the British military and reducing the ability of the colonial legislatures to check their power. Most notably, General Thomas Gage, governor of Massachusetts and commander-in-chief of British forces in the colonies.

That is to say, George III, the British Parliament, and his officials have together passed laws to apply in America, most critically the Townshend Acts and Intolerable Acts, which the colonists assert they had no right to do. The patriot position was that the British Parliament had the right to legislate on British matters and possibly on matters that concerned the entire empire, but not domestic matters in the colonies. Hence, any law passed by the British Parliament that dealt with domestic American matters was inherently illegitimate. The position of the royal government was that Parliament was in fact sovereign over all territories of the crown, with the colonial legislatures having a subordinate rather than separate authority.

Jefferson now lists the specific intentions of these illegitimate acts for this and the following eight grievances. This first one, we’ve effectively already covered. The two specific pieces of legislation at issue were the Quartering Act of 1765 — which New York refused to comply with — and Quartering Act of 1774, one of the Intolerable Acts.

Refers to the Administration of Justice Act 1774, another of the Intolerable Acts. Nicknamed the Murder Act by the patriots, it allowed the governor of Massachusetts to move the trial of a royal official to another colony or Britian itself, so long as the alleged crime occurred while they were carrying out official duties. (Which could include, e.g. suppressing unrest or making arrests.) The patriots alleged that this would allow royal officials to get away with any crime, up to and including murder, and undermined trial by jury by allowing more favourable British juries to rule on crimes committed in America.

The Trade Act 1774, better known as the Boston Port Act, was the first of the Intolerable Acts. It ordered Boston harbour to be closed unless and until the city agreed to pay back the cost of the damages caused by the Boston Tea Party. Patriots called it collective punishment without trial and an illegitimate imposition on Boston’s right to trade freely with the other colonies and the world.

He said the thing! Taxation without representation! When the Stamp Act 1765 was introduced, the colonists argued that Britain had no right to impose internal taxation on the colonies. The unrest it caused helped collapse the Grenville government, bringing Lord Rockingham to power in Britain. He agreed to repeal the act, but also passed the Declaratory Act 1766, asserting Parliament’s sovereignty over the colonies. After his government also fell, Pitt the Elder came to power and his chancellor of the exchequer, Charles Townshend, passed the Townshend Acts which sought to impose tariffs, rather than internal taxes, to raise the required money.

It was at this point that the principle of Parliament not having a right to impose domestic taxes (and other purely domestic legislation) on the colonies expanded, to Parliament having absolutely no right whatsoever to impose any legislation — even that which dealt only with trade — without the consent of the colonies. No taxation without representation. With the patriots also unwilling to actually send representatives to the British Parliament (an idea they considered asking for but rejected), this meant that they believed all taxes affecting the colonies should originate from the colonies and the colonies should be able to set their own tariff rates. Presumably this means that any money going from the colonies back to Britain, for example to contribute to collective defence, would have to be a voluntary donation.

Another part of the Townshend Acts was the Vice Admiralty Court Act 1768, which gave admiralty courts jurisdiction over smuggling cases (i.e. the non-payment of tariffs). These courts were staffed by royal appointees and did not use juries, hence depriving those accused of violating the Townshend Acts of trial by jury in front of local judges.

While I’m unaware of a specific act passed by Parliament to allow this (despite what is sometimes claimed, the Administration of Justice Act applied only to royal officials, and had nothing to do with moving the trials of American colonists to Britain), but it did indeed happen. The idea that the men involved in the 1772 Gaspee Affair might to transported to and trialed in Britain was seen as an outrage by the patriots, though they were never actually apprehended and transported. Nonetheless, later American patriots taken prisoner were sent to Britain.

This is a very specific grievance that the patriots were absolutely outraged by. Can you guess the province in question? That’s right, Quebec! The Quebec Act was lumped into the Intolerable Acts by the colonists, though in fact they weren’t related in the minds of the British government (the other Intolerable Acts being specifically about punishing Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party).

So what was so awful about Quebec? The Quebec Act gave Quebecois their own local system of government, basically restoring how the province had been governed before it was conquered by Britain during the Seven Years War. French law was substituted for English law. Tithes to the Catholic Church were collected and Catholics were allowed to hold public office again. The semi-feudal French land system was reimposed. There would be no elected assembly. And the size of Quebec was expanded far beyond what it had been, favouring Quebec in land disputes against the colonies to its south.

While some of the hostility to this act was due to prejudice towards Catholics amongst the protestant colonists, the patriots were outraged at the royal government seemingly treating a defeated enemy better than them and currying favour with the Quebecois to keep them loyal even as the royal government attempted to crush resistance in Massachusetts. Furthermore, patriots felt that this French system was backwards, gave fewer rights to residents, and unduly favoured the Catholic Church in a way that ‘established’ it, to use later constitutional terminology. Hence the idea that Quebec’s government was ‘arbitrary’ (i.e. tyrannical) and a model for introducing absolute government on other colonies.

The British Parliament and crown maintained that they had issued the colonial charters and therefore had the right to abolish or alter them at will. The colonists believed that they did not or should not have this right. Specifically, the Massachusetts Government Act 1774 was another of the Intolerable Acts. It contravened the colony’s charter and effectively instituted direct rule over the colony by its governor.

Another we’ve basically covered. The idea that Parliament is ultimately sovereign was asserted in the Declaratory Act 1766, as mentioned. It meant that, when colonial assemblies were dismissed, the British government maintained that only Parliament was left to pass legislation over the colony. As we’ve already seen, the patriots asserted that in fact this power returned to the people, who were free to constitute a new legislature to represent them.

The Proclamation of Rebellion was issued in 1775, after the Battle of Bunker Hill, officially declaring the colonies to be in rebellion and therefore an effective state of war against them. This is an assertation of the 1688 principle I’ve already mentioned, made explicit through the use of the term ‘abdicate’, the same used during the Glorious Revolution to justify the replacement of James II with William III after the former fled England. That is to say, that if George III has declared war against his subjects, he has effectively abdicated his role as king over them, at which point the sovereign authority to constitute a government reverts to the people. Another explicit reference to Britain’s own struggle against monarchical authority and the political-legal theories established during that time and expanded upon by the likes of Locke.

Once America was declared to be in full rebellion, unrestricted naval warfare began. Though the royal government believed that they needed to strongly crack down on an illegitimate rebellion, the patriots believed that this just proved that the king and his government would destroy the colonies in order to prevent them from asserting their legitimate rights, which only further added to the necessity of their taking up of arms.

With the British army being small and stretched thin, the British government negotiated to hire elements from foreign armies, mostly from the small German states of the Holy Roman Empire, to bolster their forces. These became known as the Hessians to the Americans, as a significant number came from the Hesse region.

Though it’s somewhat of a distinction without a difference, these weren’t actually ‘mercenaries’, they were regular troops being hired out by their government. This was a reasonably common practice in European warfare at the time, and one way that these small German states made money in peacetime, that has fallen out of practice. However, Britain had never used such troops to put down rebellions before and it was feared that these foreign soldiers would be particularly harsh on the local population, with whom they could not easily communicate and without any national or historic ties to the colonists. It drove home that the Americans were being treated more like a hostile foreign state than a group of citizens in rebellion.

Impressment was the practice of naval conscription, whereby the royal navy was allowed to take any British subject sailors it needed from ports and civilian ships. As American colonists were still seen as British subjects, they could be impressed. If they refused to fight against their fellow colonists, the punishment would begin with fines, progress to flogging, and end with hanging. That the Royal Navy continued to board American ships after American independence to search for British sailors to impress was a major continuing grievance between the two states, partially leading to the War of 1812 under President James Maddison, the primary writer of the constitution and Jefferson’s protege.

The Eek! grievance, saving the worst ‘til last. Domestic insurrection is of course code for slave revolt and, well, the rest is pretty explicit.

Dunmore’s Declaration and the Philipsburg Proclamation both established that enslaved people, if they ran away to join the British army, would be freed. Though very few actually reached the British lines, these promises led to a notable increase in escapes. Of course, we should not interpret this as the British being anti-slavery. They were desperate and, when operating in the southern colonies, saw the strategic advantage of such measures. The Philipsburg Proclamation, after all, only promised freedom to escaped slaves hoping to enlist. It also said that captured black people would be purchased from their captors and put to work ‘for the public service’.

Some historians have argued that the American Revolution was in some sense a revolution of slave-holders against an increasingly abolitionist Britain, in the south, and a revolution of merchants against tariffs in the north, with nary an ideological component at all. This goes far too far in my opinion, even if it would stroke my latent patriotism for the British to be the ‘good guys’ of the revolution. Protecting slavery was a component of revolutionary support in parts of the south as the war dragged on, but it was an opinion very out of step with the Founding Fathers. On the other side, abolitionism was no stronger in Britain than in the northern colonies and, as stated, any ‘pro-black’ British policy was entirely strategic. In fact, most abolitionists in Britain and America were pro-patriot, because all political radicals of the time were united in their support for the American cause. Charles James Fox, the British abolitionists and radical leader who died just before his faction finally got the slave trade abolished in 1807, was the most famously pro-patriot British politician around.

Similarly, the British government made alliance with Native American nations as a matter of convenience, and entirely abandoned them after the war. You could certainly argue that, if Britain had won the war, they might have attempted to limit colonial expansion to keep the colonies weak, and thereby prevented westward settlement and the horrendous fate of those indigenous nations. It’s an interesting counterfactual, but nonetheless nothing more than idle speculation.

None of which, of course, absolves the patriots for their racism. Two wrongs and all that. I’m not here to tell you what to think about the Founding Fathers — and Jefferson in particular — in this regard. The question has been raging for a very long time and my own thoughts would take up the space of a whole separate article. I think the 27th is a useful grievance, however, for showing the evident failure even within the document of the Declaration to live up to its stated ideals, and for presaging later developments in post-independence American politics. Jefferson even wrote another grievance, which the southern states rejected, arguing that slavery had been imposed on the colonies by Britain and was an innate evil. A grievance that is difficult to reconcile with this one, and shows how this fight was raging — and the leading Founding Fathers were being forced to seek support from a southern pro-slavery lobby they were ideologically hostile to — right from the beginning of American independence.

Jefferson’s 27 grievances, for good and ill, 250 years later. All I can say is I’m glad we Brits lost this one. There’s one final statement, right at the end, that tends to get forgotten. ‘We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.’ Only together do we achieve anything in this world.

It’s a little early but: happy birthday, America.

Thank you for reading. I love a niche historical deep dive into anything involving my beloved 18th and 19th centuries, and have some even more out there ideas coming down the pipeline.

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I wasn’t able to post my usual short story last week due to personal constraints on my time, and then this was published on my usual off week due to get as close as possible to 4th July, so I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to get back on schedule from here. Hopefully, I’ll have a short story ready for next week, and can then get back to normal, which a non-fiction article two weeks after that. Speaking of which, that short story will be A Spill of Wine, about intrigue and honour at a royal court. For my next non-fiction, your guess is as good as mine. It’s been that kind of time around here.

Don’t know where to continue with my writing? This might help: