Ch. 2.2. Jefferson’s Charges Against the King, Group I: Intro and Charges 4 and 8-10

Maier puts the charges against the king into three main groups. This may seem a bit complicated at first, but this way of breaking down the Declaration’s contents is actually very helpful.

*Note: To avoid confusion, it is important to keep in mind that Maier analyzes the specific charges that would appear in the Declaration, but she does so based on the text of Jefferson’s draft. This draft was then edited by Congress to produce the final version of the Declaration with which we are familiar. We will compare the two versions more carefully in the next Module. 

This sub-chapter provides Maier’s introduction to the first group of twelve charges against the king (Maier, pp. 107-11), along with a detailed analysis of four of these charges (numbered 4, 8, 9, and 10 in Jefferson’s draft).

The accusations Jefferson leveled against George III fell into three general groups. The first, which is by far the most obscure and prob­lematic, includes the first eight ”by” clauses in the Virginia preamble. The King had attempted to establish a tyranny, they said,

1. By putting his negative on laws the most wholesome & necessary for the public good.
2. by denying to his governors permission to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation for his assent &, when so suspended, neglecting to attend to them for many years:
3. by refusing to pass certain other laws, unless the persons to be benefited by them would relinquish the inestimable right of representation in the legislature:
4. by dissolving legislative assemblies repeatedly & continually for opposing with manly firmness his invasion on the rights of the people
5. when dissolved, by refusing to call others for a long space of time, thereby leaving the political system without any legislative head.
6. by endeavouring to prevent the population of our country & encouraging the importation of foreigners & raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands…
7. by keeping among us in times of peace standing armies & ships of war
8. by affecting to render the military independent of & superior to the civil power.

In preparing the committee’s draft Declaration of Independence, Jefferson rewrote these clauses, eliminating here, as in subsequent charges against the King, the “by” construction – and so distancing the American Declaration from its grandparent, the English Declaration of Rights – and substituted a series of independent statements beginning “he has” that drummed home the King’s iniquity by attributing direct responsibility to him, point after point.

Four new charges against the King were in­serted in this first part of the Declaration of Independence, which are numbers four and eight through ten below:

[1] he has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and neces­sary for the public good:
[2] he has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate & pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has neglected utterly to attend to them.
[3] he has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, & formidable to tyrants only:
[4] he has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, & distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures:
[5] he has dissolved Representative houses repeatedly & continually, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions1 on the rights of the people:

[6] he has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of an­nihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of inva­sion from without, & convulsions within:
[7] he has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization bf foreigners; re­fusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither; & raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands:
[8] he has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these states, refusing his assent to laws for establishing judi­ciary powers:
[9] he has made our judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries:

[10] he has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed power, & sent hither swarms of officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance:

[11] he has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies and ships of war without the consent of our legislatures:

[12] he has affected to render the military independent of & superior, to the civil power.

In his critique of the Declaration, Hutchinson noted that the first of these accusations was “general … without any particulars to sup­port it,” which made it “fit enough to be placed at the head of a list of imaginary grievances.” In fact, the way Jefferson presented his charges suggests a continuing influence of the English Declaration of Rights, which also presented its charges in general terms.

But some of Jefferson’s charges were particularly obscure, such as his statement that George III had “refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” What did he mean? Hutchinson guessed that the charge was inspired by laws restricting colonial legis­latures from issuing paper currency, which did cause considerable dis­tress. But this was only a guess.

The problem with this opening set of charges against the King was not just in the language with which they were stated, but in the fact that they referred to controver­sies over the King’s use of his executive powers that had often been played out just within individual colonies.

John Adams almost certainly sug­gested the fourth charge, that the King had “called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, & distant from the deposi­tory of their public records.” It recalled the royal governor’s moving the Massachusetts House of Representatives to Cambridge in 1768 when, as Hutchinson said, the recent arrival of British troops and a “riotous, violent opposition to Government” in Boston seemed to make it unwise for the assembly to meet there.

The eighth charge, that the King had “suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these states,” was inspired by an extended controversy in North Carolina. The superior courts there were finally closed in 1773 because the assembly absolutely refused to exclude from its court bill a clause allowing the attachment of nonresidents’ property in prosecutions for debt, which the Crown considered contrary to the substance and spirit of English law.

The ninth charge rested upon a broader base. Controversies over the independence of the colonial judiciary raged in Pennsylvania and New York beginning in the 1750s, then “exploded” in the next decade after an order of December 1761 from the King in Council perma­nently forbade the issuance of colonial judicial commissions for any term except “the pleasure of the Crown.” In England, judges had en­joyed tenure on good behavior since 1701, and in 1761 George III him­self described the independence of the judiciary as “one of the best securities of the rights and liberties of his subjects.” Fears that the Crown sought to control the judiciary increased after the Townsend Act of 1767 suggested that it would soon begin paying judges’ salaries, as it did in Massachusetts six years later.

The tenth accusation, that George III had sent “swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance,” was probably prompted by the American Board of Customs Commissioners, which was located in Boston, and its de­pendents–clerks, surveyors, tide waiters and the like–whom the Bible-reading folk of Massachusetts considered much like an Old Testament plague of locusts.

There was good reason for referring to some of these cases in only the most oblique way. To examine them more closely confirms the adage that there are two sides to every story, and the colonists weren’t always clearly on the side of the angels. In North Carolina, for exam­ple, the royal governor, acting on instructions from the Crown, had tried to reestablish the courts, but the assembly refused to recognize his authority to do so or to pay the judges. Who, then, “suffered the administration of justice totally to cease”? The assembly’s intransi­gence might well have been justified; still, the situation was complex. The less said the better.

As for the American Board of Customs Commissioners, could it honestly be alleged, Hutchinson asked, that “thirty or forty additional officers in the whole Continent” were “the Swarms which eat out the substance of … three millions of people”?

And how outrageous was it that the governor moved the Massachusetts assem­bly to Cambridge? Harvard College had convenient public rooms in which the legislature could assemble, Hutchinson noted, and repre­sentatives could lodge in private houses, so Cambridge was “not un­comfortable.” Moreover, it was “within four miles of the Town of Boston, and less distant than any other Town fit for the purpose.” The assembly had,in fact voluntarily adjourned to Cambridge when small­pox raged in Boston.