The Republican Tradition and the Struggle for Constitutional Liberty
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Adams declared that the Stamp Act was ‘‘unconstitutional’’ because ‘‘we
have always understood it to be a grand and fundamental principle of
the Constitution that no freeman should be subject to any tax to which he
has not given his own consent, either in person or by proxy.’’ But, said
Adams, ‘‘the most grievous innovation of all is the alarming extension of
the power of courts of admiralty. In these courts, one judge presides
alone. No juries have any concern there.’’ The denial of jury trials, he
concluded, ‘‘is directly repugnant to the Great Charter itself; for, by that
charter, ‘no freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized of his
freehold . . . but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the
land.’ ’’
Thus the Stamp Act, here at the outset of the constitutional struggle
that led to the American Revolution and the Philadelphia Convention,
threatened two basic constitutional rights—the right to be taxed only by
consent and the right to trial by jury. More than any other law of Parliament, this Act eroded the colonists’ faith in British rule, and from this
point on relations between the mother country and her rebellious colonies steadily deteriorated; and with each new statutory effort by Parliament to discipline and subdue the colonies came another assault on the
common law and the constitution. Seeking not new rights but merely the
preservation of those threatened or denied by a headstrong Parliament,
the Americans slowly and reluctantly came to the conclusion that only by
declaring their independence and establishing their own constitutions,
laws, and bills of rights could they enjoy the constitutional and common
law ‘‘rights of Englishmen.’’
The Republican Tradition and the
Struggle for Constitutional Liberty
In responding to the radical policies and innovative constitutional doctrines of King George and his Tory ministers, the Americans were also
much attracted to John Hampden and Algernon Sidney, whose names
were virtually synonymous with constitutional liberty. Hampden was
the leader of a local tax revolt that shook the foundations of royal absolutism in seventeenth-century England. In the Petition of Right of 1628,
the King had bound himself never again to imprison any person except