The very positive outlook interpreted by Edmund S. Morgan in the beginning of “The Birth of the Republic” on how much the colonists were unbothered by being under English rule is deceptive. He begins with the exploration of how English authority was gotten around by bribery. For example the Molasses Act which would have done a “crippling job”(10) on the lucrative and economically important New England rum trade was gotten around by paying the customs officers from a half penny to a penny and a half in return for those officers not collecting sixpence per gallon on molasses imported. Likewise Morgan asserts that the other navigation acts were unobtrusive as well but the truth of the matter is that eventually there had to be a straw that would break the camels back. Something had to happen in social, economic and political thought to move a people from idle chit-chat to general thought to action and that straw happened to be the taxes levied after 1763 in the form of several acts passes by the English parliament.
Deep in the minds of the colonists was one small thing that would unite them all, an ingrained love for freedom and equality. When England’s government started to levy taxes at the American colonies the soci
eties reaction was that they were having their freedom taken away, and to the social mind work that was increasingly forming this was the biggest of grievances that could have occurred. A parliament which did not have a an American representative was wanting to become rich without having to do anything to deserve it. The basis of the evil was that the colonists’ society was founded on one main principle, property. Any tax would take their money and in turn their property which was their key to independence. Your own property meant your own food, and own money and made you “independent from all other men, including kings and lords.”(17) Furthermore there was a another “principle forming the Americans mind that all men are created equal”(76) That declaration meant to the Americans that they should have the same independence as a nation as what others enjoyed and only have to pay taxes they levied therefore on themselves for their own benefit not the benefit of some far off guardian. They furthermore should be able to have an army that would defend their rights and principles as they see fit not be under the whim of some soldiers whose primary interests would be a far off country and not in the best interest of the colonists. Principle ideas like this were uniting the society, making a colonial consciousness aptly brought out by social activists like John Locke who explained that “men are by nature free, equal and independent of each other [and therefore] have every right to fashion their own government.”(73) Also the philosopher Thomas Pai
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