Grievances of the United States Declaration of Independence
The grievances/complaints was a section from the Declaration of Independence where the colonists listed their problems with the British government, specifically George III. The United States Declaration of Independence contains 27 grievances against the decisions and actions of George III of Great Britain. Historians have noted the similarities with John Locke's works and the context of the grievances. Historical precedents such as Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights 1689 had established the principle that the King was not to interfere with the Rights of Englishmen held by the people. In the view of the American colonies, the King had opposed the very purpose of government by opposing laws deemed necessary for the public good.
Grievance 1
The Colonial assemblies passed various legislations, including ones on governing their slaves, creating colonial currencies, and requesting representatives to be sent to Parliament, but the King withheld his approval. Secretary Conway informed the Americans that Parliament would not pursue legal action against colonists who had actively protested against the Stamp Acts, provided that the assemblies would pay for any public property which had been destroyed. In complying with this demand, the Assembly of Massachusetts thought that it would be "wholesome and necessary for the public good" to grant free pardon to all who had been engaged in the protests, and passed an act accordingly—but George III refused to ratify it. Self-government was at the heart of the Founding Fathers' concerns, and each time George refused to ratify Colonial legislation, he intensified that concern. History professor Steven Pincus states that the first grievance is "extremely important" because many of the colonies passed measures intended to slow down the pace of slavery. Any time that such laws were introduced by local assemblies, they "were routinely vetoed by the Board of Trade, the Secretary of State, and King George III."Grievance 2
This is an indictment of the King's appointed governors in the colonies, who had refused to endorse laws conducive to the public good. The Massachusetts Assembly passed a law in 1770 for taxing Government officers in that colony, but the King ordered the governor to withhold his assent. This violated the colonial charter, and further showed how little power the colonies had."Neglect" is one of two reasons mentioned by John Locke as a valid reason for dissolved government.
Grievance 3
Chapter 19 of Two Treatises of Government notes that "when such a single person, or prince, sets up his own arbitrary will, in place of the laws, which are the will of the society, declared by the legislative, then the legislative is changed." Locke lists changing the legislature without the people's knowledge or consent as another situation which justifies reform of government.Grievance 4
On May 20, 1774, Parliament passed the Massachusetts Government Act, which nullified the Massachusetts Charter of 1691 and allowed governor Thomas Gage to dissolve the local provincial assembly and force them to meet in Salem.Grievance 5
The Massachusetts Assembly issued a circular to other Assemblies in 1768 urging mutual co-operation in asserting the principle that Great Britain had no right to tax the colonists without their consent. The King then demanded that the Assembly rescind the resolutions expressed in the circular, and he ordered the governor to dissolve the Massachusetts Assembly immediately if they refused. Other assemblies were warned by the Government not to imitate Massachusetts, and the King dissolved any that refused to yield to their royally appointed governors. The North Carolina General Assembly and Virginia General Assembly were dissolved for denying the right of the King to tax the colonies or to extradite Americans from the colonies to stand trial. Several assemblies discussed forming a general Congress with delegates from all the colonies in 1774, and the King dissolved nearly all those that entertained the idea. Royal Governor Francis Fauquier dissolved the Virginia House of Burgesses on May 31, 1765.Grievance 6
The Assembly of New York refused to comply with the provisions of the Mutiny Act in 1766, so Parliament passed the New York Restraining Act 1767 which suspended the Assembly's legislative authority. John Dickinson discusses the suspension of New York's assembly in Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.He did not give consent.
Grievance 7
There had been a large influx of German immigrants immigrating to America, and the King wanted to discourage such immigration. The Government was concerned over the increasing power of the colonies and the widespread popularity of republican ideals among German immigrants. After the peace of 1763, few people settled west of the Alleghenies due to these restrictions, and immigration had almost ceased by the time of the revolution.Grievance 8
Parliament deprived the people of Massachusetts the right to elect their judges in 1774. Instead, the King appointed all the colony's judges, and they were dependent on him for their salaries and subject to his directions—and those salaries came from taxes and duties on the colonists. The same act deprived the colonists of the benefit of trial by jury, and the "administration of justice" was obstructed. Other colonies expressed similar grievances concerning the courts of law.Grievance 9
Judges and royally appointed governors did not depend upon the colonists for their income; they drew their salaries from the King, and the American colonists saw that this led their officers to sympathize with Parliament but not with the colonies. The Colonial assemblies protested against these measures, leading to the formation of the Committees of correspondence in 1774.When Chief Justice Oliver declared it to be his intention to receive his salary from the crown, the Assembly proceeded to impeach him and petitioned Governor Thomas Hutchinson for his removal. The governor refused compliance and great irritation ensued.
Grievance 10
After the passage of the Stamp Act, stamp distributors were appointed in every considerable town. In 1766 and 1767, acts for the collection of duties created "swarms of officers", all of whom received high salaries; and when in 1768, admiralty and vice-admiralty courts were established on a new basis, an increase in the number of officers was made. The high salaries and extensive prerequisites of all of these were paid with the people's money, and thus "swarms of officers" "ate out their substance."Grievance 11
In 1763, Britain and France signed the Treaty of Paris to end the Seven Years' War. Parliament realized they needed to keep a permanent army in the American colonies in order both to keep the French from reasserting their control of their former territories and to prevent open warfare between the colonists and the Indians along the frontier. Although the colonists initially welcomed the protection provided by the soldiers by the 1760s and early 1770s they had increasingly come to see the army as a tool for Parliament to enforce various revenue acts -- e.g. the Stamp Act and Townshend Acts -- that the colonists viewed as illegitimate. The last straw came in 1774 when Parliament passed the Quartering Act in response to the Boston Tea Party. This act allowed army officers to appropriate private property to quarter their troops without the consent of the property's owners. When General Thomas Gage occupied Boston in September 1774, he relied on this act to quarter his troops. It was Gage's military occupation of Boston that led the Second Continental Congress to include this grievance in the Declaration of Independence.Grievance 12
Upon arrival at Boston in 1774, Thomas Gage - commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America - assumed control of the civil government as royal governor of Massachusetts. Both offices were held by royal appointment and without the approval of the people or the provincial government of Massachusetts. This was done according to the authority of Parliament in which the colonies were not represented. The purpose of this arrangement was to enforce the payment of customs, quell insurrection and resistance, and execute punitive measures. The Continental Congress considered that the police power of the state had been removed from accountability to the people of the province or their local, duly-elected leaders and could thus be used despotically to further the unjust policies imposed by the crown.Grievance 13
The "others" with whom the King is thus said to have combined were the members of Parliament, the existence of which as a legally constituted body possessing authority over them the Americans thus refused even by implication to recognize. This was due to the establishment of a Board of Trade, to act independent of colonial legislation through its creatures in the enforcement of revenue laws. This was altogether foreign to the constitution of any of the colonies and produced great indignation. The establishment of this power and the remodeling of the admiralty courts to exclude trial by jury therein, in most cases rendered the government fully obnoxious to the charge in the text. The people felt their degradation under such petty tyranny and resolved to spurn it. It was effectually done in Boston, and the government, after all its bluster, was obliged to recede. In 1774, the members of the council of Massachusetts, were, by a Parliamentary enactment, chosen by the king, to hold the office during his pleasure. Almost unlimited power was also given to the governor, and the people were indeed subjected to "a jurisdiction foreign to their constitution" by these members of royalty.Grievance 14
In 1765, Parliament passed an amendment to the Mutiny Act commonly referred to as the Quartering Act. It allowed soldiers stationed in the colonies to request shelter from any citizen, and created punishment for refusal.Grievance 15
In 1768, two citizens of Annapolis, in Maryland, died in a violent dispute against a group of Marines. The trial was controversial; and in the face of overwhelming evidence against them, the defendants were acquitted.Grievance 16
In the years leading up to the American Revolution, the Navigation Acts had been passed to control trade with the colonies of Spain and France, hindering significant sources of revenue for the American colonists.Grievance 17
In addition to the revenue taxes imposed from and were attempted to be collected utilizing writs of assistance, the Stamp Act was passed, and duties upon paper, painters' colors, glass, tea, and many other goods, were levied. This worsened tension between the colonists and the government, as most colonists believed that representation was needed as a justification for being taxed, and the Government was continually trying to pay off debt from the Seven Years' War.Grievance 18
After these functionaries were driven from Boston in 1768, an act was passed which placed violations of the revenue laws under the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts, where the offenders were tried, but the prosecutors were biased towards the crown.Grievance 19
On the fifteenth of April, 1774, Lord North introduced a bill in Parliament, entitled "A bill for the impartial administration of justice in the cases of persons questioned for any acts done by them in the execution of the laws, or for the suppression of riots and tumults in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England." This bill, known as the Administration of Justice Act, provided that in case any person indicted for murder in that province, or any other capital offence, or an indictment for riot, resistance of the magistrate, or impeding the revenue laws in the smallest degree, he might, at the option of the Governor, or, in his absence, of the Lieutenant Governor, be taken to another colony, or transported from the colonies, for trial.The bill met violent opposition in parliament. The minister seemed to be actuated more by a spirit of retaliation, than by a conviction of the necessity of such a measure. "We must show the Americans," said he, "that we will no longer sit quietly under their insults; and also, that even when roused, our measures are not cruel or vindictive, but necessary and efficacious." Colonel Barre denounced the bill in unmeasured terms. "This," said he, "is indeed the most extraordinary resolution that was ever heard in the Parliament of England. It offers new encouragement to military insolence, already so insupportable".
The text of the bill contained the following:
In that case, it shall and may be lawful for the governor, or lieutenant-governor, to direct, with the advice and consent of the council, that the inquisition, indictment, or appeal, shall be tried in some other of his Majesty's colonies, or Great Britain.
Grievance 20
This refers to the Quebec Act of 1774 which expanded the use of French civil law in Quebec and expanded Canadian borders into what is now the Midwestern states of the United States.Grievance 21
This is a reiteration of a charge already considered, and refers to the alteration of the Massachusetts charter, to make judges and other officers independent of the people, and subservient to the crown. The governor was empowered to remove and appoint all inferior judges, the attorney-generals, provost-marshals, and justices of the peace, and to appoint sheriffs independent of the council. As the sheriffs chose jurors, trial by jury became mostly nonexistent. The people had hitherto been allowed, by their charter, to select jurors; now the entire matter was placed in the hands of the government.Grievance 22
This, too, is another phase of the charge just considered. Suppression occurred of the Legislature of New York, and in several cases, the governors, after dissolving Colonial Assemblies, assumed the right to make proclamations stand in the place of statute law. Lord Dunmore assumed this right in 1775, and so did Sir James Wright of Georgia, and Lord William Campbell of South Carolina..Grievance 23
In his message to Parliament early in 1775, George III declared the colonists to be in a state of open rebellion; and by sending armies to the Americas, he "abdicated government," by thus declaring them no longer under his protection. Shortly after, the Prohibitory Act was passed by Parliament. He sanctioned the acts of governors in employing Native Americans to quell his rebellion, and negotiated the hiring of German soldiers.John Adams said of the Prohibitory act: "It throws thirteen colonies out of the royal protection, levels all distinctions, and makes us independent in spite of our supplications and entreaties... It may be fortunate that the act of independency should come from the British Parliament rather than the American Congress."