John Adams, 2nd President of the United States, and his references to the Glorious Revolution of 1688

So, following on from this recent post, I picked up a copy of Inventing America; Jefferson's Declaration of Independence by Pulitzer Prize winning author Garry Wills, written in 1978, which is a comprehensive scholarly analysis of the language and sources which Thomas Jefferson had drawn from in crafting the Declaration of Independence. He was one of a Committee of Five who worked through a few drafts before presenting the final one to the Secretary of the Second Continental Congress, Ulsterman Charles Thomson, on 4th July 1776.

William of Orange's 1688 Declaration is, as expected, mentioned a few times in it, but not the precise observation that I'd made. So, more research required, or maybe I'm the first one to ever notice the remarkable similarity of their respective opening sentences.  

In my reading and hoking I am finding multiple references to the American colonists' desire, not to be anti British but rather to be fully British, in pursuit of their liberties, and that they looked back William of Orange's 1688 Declaration and the 1689 Bill of Rights that William and Mary signed into effect as their first action as joint monarchs, as the legal precedent for those liberties.

Here is an extract from a lengthy article on the excellent Massachusetts Historical Society website about John Adams (he would become the 2nd President of the United States and was one of those in Boston who took part in the Boston Tea Party) –

"Adams does not go the whole way to independence, to complete and permanent separation from Great Britain, but he advances and supports a revolutionary interpretation of the British system. The idea of a commonwealth of states under the king that Adams espoused was not solely his own, but he was one of its earliest proponents. His argument, moreover, was unique in the massive support he gave it from legal sources. 

Adams would not have considered his interpretation of the British system revolutionary in any modern sense; he saw it as a return to the right view of things in terms of legal precedents. For him it was revolutionary in eighteenth-century terms, when “revolution” meant restoring ancient liberties. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 had been glorious because it successfully re-established liberties threatened by the tyranny of James II. 

Corruption and even conspiracy in Great Britain threatened American liberties in the 1760's; a penetrating analysis of history and of learned commentaries on judicial decisions revealed that Parliament, a sink of corruption, was playing a role in the affairs of the American colonies for which there was no precedent. Denial of power to Parliament overseas would restore liberty."

The British crown and government establishment really screwed up big time throughout the 1700s, in both Ireland and America. If they'd 'wound their necks in' the world would have been a very different place. What if....?

Thomas Jefferson himself even said - at the time of the Second Continental Congress in 1775 - that he "would rather be in dependance on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation upon earth". But it's John Adams who gets to put the cherry on top, with these remarks about the Charter of Massachusetts Bay of 1691 - which a later writer said "the inhabitants treasured as a sacred guarantee of their liberties". Following the Boston Tea Party of December 1773, the vengeful British Parliament 'abrogated' or revoked the Charter on 20 May 1774. Adams said this –

"Our charter was granted by king William and queen Mary, three years after the revolution; and the oaths of allegiance are established by a law of the province. So that our allegiance to his majesty is not due by virtue of any act of a British parliament, but by our own charter and province laws. It ought to be remembered, that there was a revolution here, as well as in England, and that we made an original, express contract with king William, as well as the people of England...  It is upon this, or a similar clause in the charter of William and Mary that our patriots have built up the stupendous fabric of American independence."

- Quoted from Novanglus, and Massachusettensis; or Political Essays, published in the years 1774 and 1775 by John Adams.

• Image at the top is of William Daniels playing John Adams in the 1972 film, 1776.