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America’s First Constitutions and Declarations of Rights
mons having refused to receive colonial petitions; (8) the right to be free
from standing armies unless legislative consent had been granted; and
(9) the right to free government, which Parliament had abridged in several colonies by conferring legislative power on councils appointed by
the Crown.
The Americans claimed other rights, of course, but many of these were
seldom mentioned because they were not part of the dispute with England. Freedom of the press and the free exercise of religion, for example,
did not enter into the debate, although these were rights much valued by
the colonists. Although we no longer think of security as a ‘‘right,’’ the
colonists thought that security, especially security of property, was one of
the most important guarantees of the English Constitution. ‘‘The absolute rights of Englishmen,’’ wrote James Otis on behalf of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, ‘‘are the rights of personal security, personal liberty, and of private property.’’ John Dickinson contended that
‘‘Men cannot be happy, without freedom; nor free, without security of
property; nor so secure, unless the sole power to dispose of it be lodged
in themselves.’’
In essence, however, the quarrels between Parliament and the American assemblies over the nature and scope of individual rights were symptomatic of a more fundamental disagreement: the meaning of the English
Constitution and of constitutional government. The Constitution as the
Americans understood it was the old English Constitution of customary
powers, in which inherited and inherent rights were protected against
the arbitrary capriciousness of government power. The Constitution as
London viewed it was a modernized British Constitution—the emerging
constitution of the nineteenth century—of sovereign command and unchecked parliamentary supremacy. The American dilemma was not simply that Parliament had denied certain rights, but Parliament’s claim that
it had the right to define them and impliedly to deny them at its pleasure.
The real issue was sovereignty. ‘‘A paltry tax upon tea, a particular insult,
a single act of violence or sedition,’’ a member of the House of Lords
wisely noted, ‘‘was not the true ground of the present dispute. It was not
this tax, nor that Act, nor a redress of a particular grievance. The great
question in issue is, the supremacy of this country and the subordinate
dependence of America.’’