250 years ago – 23 August 1775: Liberty Denied “A Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition”.

250 years ago on 23 August 1775, King George III published a statement which the government had prepared - rejecting all of the approaches which had been sent by the American colonists for reconciliation, including the 'Olive Branch Petition', and refusing to restore to them their full British rights - the “Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition”. 

The irony was that those very rights, and the legal charters for the colonies, had been written into law in the William and Mary Revolution of 1688/9 - the very same revolution in which William and Mary had disempowered the monarchy forever, handing all power to Parliament.

Therefore, appealing to the King had been a useless endeavour - he was little more than a figurehead, obliged to endorse whatever the government chose to do to its own citizens on both sides of the Atlantic.

“… Parliament was now more absolute than a king had ever quite been under common law…”

...............

NB: Almost 40% of MPs in Parliament (known as Rockingham Whigs) supported the American colonists. If the government and King had restored full British rights to the colonists, the whole issue would have been over and the colonists would have happily remained as British subjects.

This was not a question of nationality. This was about liberty.

The colonists' responses, made public in December 1775, would yet again express that...