The American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence by George H. Smith

Author:George H. Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: CATO Institute
Published: 2017-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

As I explained in an earlier chapter, a design to establish despotism was the bright line in Radical Whig ideology that separated the right of resistance from the right of revolution. Under certain conditions (which I will discuss in a later chapter), resistance against specific laws was viewed by Radical Whigs as justifiable, but revolution was another matter entirely. A revolution was not justified unless it could be shown that unjust laws were part of an overall plan to establish despotism. As John Locke put it in his Second Treatise of Government (1690):

Revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in publick affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient Laws, and all the slips of human frailty will be born by the People, without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of Abuses, Prevarications, and Artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see whither they are going; ‘tis not to be wonder’d, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands, which may secure to them the ends for which Government was at first erected.

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