Its full title was A dissertation on the rise, progress, views, strength, interests and characters, of the two parties of the Whigs and Tories - written by the Huguenot Paul De Rapin in 1717, as a means of explaining English liberties and the Glorious Revolution which had seen De Rapin flee from persecution in France, and come to England with William Prince of Orange. Unsurprisingly, it was reprinted in Boston in 1773 by Joseph Greenleaf. It's on Archive.org here. Once again, 1688 is proven to be the template for 1776. The liberties of 1688 are what the Colonists sought in the 1770s.
In our era we live in a 'headspace' of simplistic duality of competing nationalities - so much so that it's hard to explain to anyone that there are other ways of thinking and understanding. Competitive international sport has probably skewered us - for the past few generations we have watched countries line up against each other in athletics, football, rugby, cricket - even musically with the Eurovision Song Contest.
But within nation-states there are also competing ideologies, competing ideas as to how the nation should be run. Had the more liberty-oriented Whigs been in charge of Britain for the years from 1770-1782, America's British liberties would have been assured, and so would never have opted for independence. The Whigs weren't perfect in their handling of the Colonies, but it was the government of the Tory Prime Minister, Lord Frederick North, which enforced London rule upon America between 1770 and 1782, and which banjaxed and mismanaged the whole era, and in doing so, "lost" America. (The Whigs were back in again in March 1782 when the Marquis of Rockingham was once again made PM, for his second term, the first having ended in 1766).
De Rapin explains this:
"... that two parties appeared in the kingdom, one for the king, and one for the parliament, with a sort of equality ... The king's adherents at first had the name of cavaliers, which was afterwards changed into that of tories, and those of the parliament, then called roundheads, have received the name of whigs..."
and also
"... This parlicular branch of tories is considerable, in that, when they are in the ministry, they engage the church-tories strenuously to maintain the doctrine of passive-obedience, which goes a great way towards gaining the people to their party. They insinuate to the episcopal ministers, that they have only in view the ruin of the presbyterians, and under that pretence cause them to preach a doctrine, the consequence of which extends to all the subjects. This was experienced in the reigns of Charles II, of James II, and of queen Ann...
When the presbyterians were persecuted in Charles II's reign, passive-obedience was every where talked of. But it was still much worse under James II..."
You will notice that De Rapin excludes William III from that chronology of monarchs!
...............
In the 1770s, King George III and Lord North refused to allow the American colonists their full British liberties as had been enshrined in each of the colonial Charters and also in the 1689 Bill of Rights.
The colonists didn't - in simplistic, tabloid-headline, primary-school-level, nationalistic terms (terms that we are likely to hear a lot of over the next year) - "kick Britain out of America". Rather, the colonists rejected Tory rule from London and declared independence in order to secure those same British liberties.
"Loyalty" - in both the 1680s and the 1770s - would have been "passive obedience". But passive obedience under the guise of "loyalty" is the action of a docile population buckling to Stuart-esque tyrannical rule.
There is a time for resistance, in pursuit of liberty. It happened in 1688 - and it happened again in 1776.
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