North Carolina 1775: The London government are Traitors – to the people, the King, the Constitution and the principles of the Glorious Revolution

One of the treasures of Revolutionary era America is the vast amount of print which tells us with great precision exactly what the people's thoughts and motivations were. In this example, published almost exactly one year before the Declaration of Independence, its future signers William Hooper and Joseph Hewes, and also Richard Caswell, spell out their concepts of liberty, loyalty and resistance:

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To the COMMITTEES of the several Towns and Counties of the Province of NORTH CAROLINA, appointed for the Purpose of carrying into Execution the Resolves of the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.

GENTLEMEN,

WHEN the Liberties of a People are invaded, and Men in Authority are labouring to raise a Structure of arbitrary Power upon the Ruins of a free Constitution; when the first [Prime] Minister of Britain exerts every Influence that private Address or public Violence can give him, to shake the Barriers of personal Security and private Property; it is natural for us, Inhabitants of America, deeply interested in the Event of his Designs, to be anxious for our approaching fate, and the look up to the sources which God and the Constitution furnish, to ward off or alleviate the impending calamity…

… It becomes the Duty of us, in whom you have deposited the most sacred Truth, to warn you of your Danger, and of the most effectual Means to ward it off. It is the Right of every English Subject to be prepared with Weapons for his Defence...

... strengthen the Hands of civil Government, by resisting every Act of lawless Power. Stem Tyranny in its Commencement; oppose every Effort of an arbitrary Minister; and, by checking his Licentiousness, preserve the Liberty of the Constitution, and the Honour of your Sovereign.

Look to the reigning Monarch of Britain as your rightful and lawful Sovereign; dare every Danger and Difficulty in Support of his Person, Crown and Dignity; and consider every Man as a Traitor to his King, who, infringing the Rights of his American Subjects, attempts to invade those glorious Revolution Principles which placed him on the Throne, and must preserve him there.

We are, Gentlemen,

Your most obedient and very humble Servants, 

WILLIAM HOOPER,

JOSEPH HEWES,

RICHARD CASWELL

Philadelphia,

June 19, 1775

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Printed in The North-Carolina Weekly Gazette

New Bern, North Carolina · Friday, July 07, 1775

"Latimer and Ridley are Forgotten": 2018 article by Peter Hitchens on the Reformation – History and Mythology

I was sent this 2018 article by Peter Hitchens,  it is a long but very worthwhile read, contrasting the history of the Reformation with the mythologies which have arisen around it. 

(Pics here from a visit to Oxford in summer 2025).

Boston's Samuel Adams and the Glorious Revolution

Samuel Adams was a graduate of Harvard and was one of Boston’s founding Sons of Liberty. He

“… learned about more contemporary writers and philosophers such as John Locke and James Harrington. The events of the Glorious Revolution and the rise of Parliament had spawned a tidal wave of discussion about the relationship of power, liberty, government, and the right of revolution.

Adams nodded quick agreement with Locke's assertion that the goal of good government was to ensure men rights to life, liberty, and property. 

While based on more secular concerns, Locke's concept of the covenant between government and citizens was parallel to Adams's own deep-seated commitment to the covenant of his ancestors …”

– from Samuel Adams : Radical Puritan by Dr. William M. Fowler Jr. (1997)

This extract is from Dr Fowler's 2017 presentation in the video below

"... the first Irish to arrive in Boston were those from the northern part of the island - Ulster

Presbyterians driven off their lands in the late 18th century, they came to America by the tens of thousands. They were not welcomed in Puritan Boston where the the great eminent Divine Cotton Mather proclaimed that "the arrival of these people is simply one more way by which the devil is attempting to unsettle us". Most of these Scots Irish as we have come to call them moved West beyond the Appalachians but some did come to Boston. Of those a number left and trekked north to establish the towns of Londonderry in New Hampshire and the coastal town of Belfast in Maine – names that echoed from the land from which they had come. But others remained here often in distressed conditions. To attend to their needs in 1737 a group of gentlemen merchants and "others of the Irish Nation residing in Boston" founded the Charitable Irish Society "for the relief of their Irish Brethren poor aged and infirmed persons and such as have been reduced produced by sickness shipwreck and other accidental misfortunes". 

Professor Harvey J. Kaye on Thomas Paine – "if it was just a matter of independence the American Revolution would not have been worth pursuing".

Not merely a cosmetic change of nationality. Liberty.

"In fact, Paine later said that if it was just a matter of independence the American Revolution would not have been worth pursuing. What makes it worth pursuing is the opportunity to create a new kind of government and polity..."

1774: “a trade is carried on in human flesh between the Pennsylvanians and the province of Ulster”

In the Belfast News-Letter, 22 March 1774, a report was published, entitled 'Diary of the Proceedings of the House of Commons, Thursday 10 March 1774'. 

It describes the servant markets of Philadelphia – the city where the First Continental Congress would meet from 5 September - 26 October of that year.  The report said that “a trade is carried on in human flesh between the Pennsylvanians and the province of Ulster” – a servant was worth £15, a saddle horse worth between £25-£40. You could buy two Ulster human servants for the same price as a horse.

“… Dr. (John) Williamson's evidence went to prove, that on an average, for the fifty years preceding the late war, 3000 emigrants came yearly from the North of Ireland to settle in Pennsylvania; that since the war, the number varied from two to five or six thousand annually; that during the two last years they might amount to 7500 each year, as that was about the number he was informed, by the officer of health, came into the province; but that he understood this increase of emigration was owing chiefly to the riots, the rise of lands, and that among all he conversed with, none of them attributed it to the decline of the linen manufacture.

On being interrogated more closely, he confessed that some few said the badness of trade and want of employment was the cause, but he could not pretend to tell what trade or what employment they meant. He likewise said that none of them brought the implements of their trade with them, nor, if weavers, followed their trade.

While he was explaining this part of this evidence, he dropped and expression which called forth the attention of the committee. It was on his saying that a labouring man was of more value, or worth more, than a weaver, or almost any other, except a blacksmith, and one or two other trades; by which it appeared, that a trade is carried on in human flesh between the Pennsylvanians and the province of Ulster.

Such of the unhappy natives of that part of Ireland as cannot find employment at home, sell themselves to the masters of vessels, or persons coming from America to deal in that species of merchandise.

When they are brought to Philadelphia, or to the port which is about thirty miles off, they are either sold a-board the vessel, or by public vendue, which sale or arrival there is public notice given of, either by hand-bill, or in the newspapers.

They bring generally fifteen pounds currency at market, are sold for the term of their indentures, which is from two to four years, and on its expiration, receive a suit of cloaths, and implements of husbandry, consisting of an hoe, an axe, and a bill from their task-masters.

Several gentlemen in the committee expressing their abhorrence of such a barbarous traffic, Mr. Cavendish* asked the value of an ox in that country, or the price of beef, to which he answered he did not know; but Mr Rose-Fuller**, resolving to have some information from him, in order to estimate the comparative value between a man and other animals, asked him the price of a saddle-horse, to which the Doctor replied, from £25 to £40 currency. 

The committee broke up at half after eight, and adjourned till Tuesday.”

  

* William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire.

** Rose Fuller was an MP from 1756-77, who owned plantations in the West Indies.

 

W.E.B. Du Bois - "the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America" - an example from South Carolina in 1751

Published in 1896, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 is a remarkable and comprehensive study - it's online here. Its author, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963), was the first Black American to gain a PhD from Harvard - Carter G. Woodson was the second.

If you text-search it for "Ireland" you get various returns. Slave owners weren't the only ones to benefit from exploiting people. The colonial governments got a tax take from it too. Here's some pretty astonishing tax legislation from the General Assembly of South Carolina on 14 June 1751. It's quite the introduction –

"Whereas, the best way to prevent the mischiefs that may be attended by the great importation of negroes into this Province, will be to establish a method by which such importation should be made a necessary means of introducing a proportionable number of white inhabitants into the same...

 

Here's the section about 'negro' slaves –

"... That from and immediately after the passing of this Act, there shall be imposed on and paid by all and every the inhabitants of this Province, and other person and persons whosoever, first purchasing any negro or other slave, hereafter to be imported, a certain tax or sum of:

• ten pounds current money for every such negro and other slave of the height of four feet two inches and upwards;

• and for every one under that height, and above three feet two inches, the sum of five pounds like money;

• and for all under three feet two inches, (sucking children excepted) two pounds and ten shillings like money..."

And here's the section about 'poor foreign protestant' indentured servants –

"... the same is hereby applied for payment of the sum of:

• six pounds proclamation money to every poor foreign protestant whatever from Europe, or other poor protestant (his Majesty's subject) who shall produce a certificate under the seal of any corporation, or a certificate under the hands of the minister and church-wardens of any parish, or the minister and elders of any church, meeting or congregation in Great Britain or Ireland, of the good character of such poor protestant, above the age of twelve and under the age of fifty years;

• and for payment of the sum of three pounds like money, to every such poor protestant under the age of twelve and above the age of two years; who shall come into this Province within the first three years of the said term of five years, and settle on any part of the southern frontier lying between Pon Pon and Savannah rivers, or in the central parts of this Province," etc. For the last two years the bounty is £4 and £2."

Black people categorised and valued by height; Europeans categorised and valued by age. And the government getting its tax cut. What a shocking era. This is way beyond my area of knowledge, so I'm just posting it here for others to follow up on. 

• Du Bois Wikipedia page is online here.

William Smith of New York, 1777 – "I am one of King William's Whigs: for Liberty and the Constitution".

William Smith (1728-93) was one of the New York "Presbyterian Triumvirate" of lawyers who organised legal resistance to the 1765 Stamp Act. However, in later years, he decided to not support full independence for the American colonies.

In October 1777 British regiments burned down a number of Whig properties in New York state, including Declaration of Independence co-author Robert R. Livingston's home manor of Clermont. A few weeks later on Christmas Day,  Livingston and James Duane said to Smith "you'll become a Republican too". Smith told them –

"If you wanted a new Government, it should have been on the British model. I am a Whig of the old stamp - no Roundhead - one of King William's Whigs: for Liberty and the Constitution". 

• In 1780 during the War of Independence, Smith wrote The Candid Retrospect; or The American War Examined, by Whig Principles, the text of which is online here.

• The Library of Congress publication The Development of a Revolutionary Mentality: Papers presented at the first symposium, May 5 and 6, 1972 is online here, with excellent papers by a number of academics such as Caroline Robbins ('European Republicanism in the Century and a Half Before 1776'), Pauline Maier ('The Beginnings of American Republicanism, 1765-1776'), Mary Beth Norton ('The Loyalist Critique of the Revolution'), and Esmond Wright ('Men With Two Countries'). Here's some from Maier –

Americans of the mid 18th century held defined and emphatic views on government. They were “no friends to republicanism,” as Charleston’s Christopher Gadsden emphasised in 1763, but instead “ardent lovers” of the British Constitution, which was for them “the Work of Ages... the Envy and Admiration of the Universe, the Glory of the English Nation.” 

No form of government seemed so fitted for the preservation of liberty. King, Lords, and Commons shared power in a mixed structure that prevented any one of them from pursuing its own interests at the cost of the nation’s freedom. 

Even the colonial Sons of Liberty, who organised to resist the Stamp Act in 1765 and 1766, were outspoken in their conviction of “the Superior Excellence of the English Constitution to that of any other Form of Government upon Earth.” And should independence ultimately become necessary—a prospect the Sons of Liberty envisaged only with the “darkest Gloom and Horror”—they assumed that the institutions of a separate America would resemble those of the mother country, that ex-colonists would set about “erecting an Independent Monarchy here in America.”

• Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry on William Smith is online here.

Daniel J. Boorstin on the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution (1965)

I still encounter people who can't, or won't, grasp that 1776 was the outworking of 1688. The Northern Ireland ingrained worldview - where every single thing is perceived only by how it applies to our two competing nationalisms - is a mental prison. Apparently it's a psychological condition called belief perseverance.

There's going to be a lot of it this year – 1688 was loyalty, 1776 was disloyalty. Wrong and wrong again. 1688 and 1776 were both about liberty.

Here's yet another evidence, from Daniel J. Boorstin. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and was the Librarian of Congress from 1975-1987.

"... The continuity of American history is impressive. It should not be obscured by any supposed “revolution.” To many thoughtful colonists the War for Independence seemed but a logical sequel to British history of the previous century and a half. 

From a British Whig point of view, it was a second civil war, a fight to extend and localize in America the principles of the Glorious Revolution of 1689. And it provided the basis for a secessionist tradition which shook the new nation in the 19th century. The struggle for a new nation was not to be completed until 1865 or after ..."

- from The Americans: The National Experience (1965).

• Boorstin also gave the BBC Reith Lectures in 1974, which are on iPlayer here.

Samuel Adams (and Dr Thomas Young?) – "The Rights of the Colonists" (1772)

Also known as The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the Town of Boston, this was authored by the 50 year old Boston Puritan, the Harvard graduate and tax collector Samuel Adams - some sources say that he was assisted in it by 44 year old Dr Thomas Young. It's sparkling stuff. Adams is said to have been "vehemently Christian" whereas Young, despite his parents being Presbyterians from Ireland, was a Deist.

Here is the text. Much of it is straight out of John Locke's Two Treatises of Government - which is no surprise as it's known that Thomas Young discussed Locke with Ethan Allen in the 1760s, with whom he co-wrote Reason, The Only Oracle of Man.

Young relocated to Boston where he forged his revolutionary friendship with Samuel Adams. In one of Young's letters to Adams, he signed it off as "your friend and fellow countryman, fellow sufferer and incessant fellow laborer, Thos. Young.” 

The Rights of the Colonists states that there are three types of liberty: Natural Rights of the Colonists as Men; Natural Rights of the Colonists as Christians; Natural Rights of the Colonists as Subjects. It strongly hinted at independence for America –

"Our Ancestors received from King William and Queen Mary a Charter, by which it was understood by both Parties in the contract, that such a proportion or balance was fixed; and therefore every thing which renders any one Branch of the Legislative more independent of the other two than it was originally designed, is an alteration of the Constitution as settled by the Charter; and as it has been, until the establishment of this Revenue, the constant practice of the general Assembly to provide for the support of Government, so it is an essential part of our Constitution, as it is a necessary means of preserving an Equilibrium, without which we cannot continue a free State."

And this, against the establishment of a state religion which would empower one denomination over all of the others –

"As our Ancestors came over to this Country that they might not only enjoy their civil but their religious Rights, and particularly desired to be freed from the Prelates, who in those times cruelly persecuted all who differed in sentiment from the established Church; we cannot see without concern, the various at|tempts which have been made, and are now making, to establish an American Episcopate. Our Episcopal brethren of the Colonies do en|joy, and nightfully ought over to enjoy, the free exercise of their Religion; but as an American Episcopate is by no means essential to that free exercise of their Religion, we can|not help fearing that they who are so warmly contending for such an Establishment, have Views altogether inconsistent with the universal and peaceful enjoyment of our Christian privileges: And doing or attempting to do any thing which has even the remotest tendency to endanger this Enjoyment, is justly looked upon a great Grievance, and also an Infringement of our Rights; which is not barely to exercise, but peaceably and securely to enjoy, that Liberty with which CHRIST hath made us free." 

 

It was published under the auspices of the Boston Committee of Correspondence. Check it out online at the Massachusetts Historical Society website here.

• Then Again: Vermont wouldn’t have been Vermont without Thomas Young - article about Thomas Young on VTDigger.org here, by Mark Bushnell

• Then Again: American Revolution’s ‘necessary man’ mentored Ethan Allen - article about Thomas Young's friendship with Ethan Allan on VTDigger.org here, by Mark Bushnell

• Pauline Maier's paper for the 1976 Bicentennial, Reason and Revolution: The Radicalism of Dr. Thomas Young, is on JSTOR here.

Bernard Bailyn - "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" (1967)

(Photo above, of Bernard Bailyn and President Barack Obama, is from the New York Times website)

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If, like me, you're reading a lot about the Declaration of Independence, this book provides essential context. Bernard Bailyn (1922-2020; Wikipedia here) was one of the world's authorities on the pre-Revolution era. Published in 1967, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968. There's a scanned version on Archive.org here. There is a page about it on Wikipedia here.

Liberty is woven throughout – as the antidote or counterbalance to power. Independence is not liberty, nationality is not liberty. Bailyn observes that the printing press was the wellspring of liberty, with 400 pamphlets printed on the subject before the Declaration:

"... pamphlets appeared year after year and month after month in the crisis of the 1760s and 1770s. More than 400 of them bearing on the Anglo-American controversy were published between 1750 and 1776; over 1500 appeared by 1783. Explanatory as well as declarative, and expressive of the beliefs, attitudes, and motivations as well as of the professed goals of those who led and supported the Revolution, the pamphlets are the distinctive literature of the Revolution. They reveal, more clearly than any other single group of documents, the contemporary meaning of that transforming event..."

And, revolution as duty when power threatens liberty. 

'... Samuel Adams, speaking for the Boston Town Meeting, declared, "that ambition and lust of power above the law are ... predominant passions in the breasts of most men." These are instincts that have "in all nations combined the worst passions of the human heart and the worst projects of the human mind in league against the liberties of mankind." Power always and everywhere had had a pernicious, corrupting effect upon men. It "converts a good man in private life to a tyrant in office" ... and nothing within man is sufficiently strong to guard against these effects of power...'

The Reluctant Rebels, by Lynn Montross (1950)

Of the 340 members of the Continental Congresses from 1774-1780, only one man was a constant. Charles Thomson. Read the published Journals of the Continental Congress which Thomson was responsible for keeping through all those years and you'll see, as this book title says, they were reluctant rebels. They didn't want to be independent. They were:

• Forced to resist a London government who had withdrawn the liberties they’d had since 1689.

• Forced to declare independence in 1776 from a London government and King who refused to restore those liberties to them. 

• Forced into a war to ensure that independence.

• Then, forced to resist the new American élite, to secure those liberties, in a new Bill of Rights in 1789, a century after the original.

• And despite all that, forced to accept new taxes when George Washington himself led an American army to crush their resistance in 1794.

 

Edward Rutledge to Thomas Bee, 25 November 1775 - "an abundance of letters from gentlemen in Ireland to their friends in Boston" – British Army recruitment efforts in Ireland, summer 1775

Context: War had started, at Lexington and Concord, on 19 April 1775. The Siege of Boston began too, with the Patriot colonists taking over the city, and seizing ships offshore...

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The father of Edward Rutledge (Wikipedia here) was from somewhere in Ulster, probably Co Tyrone. The family were likely to have been Border Reiver Routledges. He emigrated to South Carolina in 1735. 

Edward was born there in 1749. He was elected to the South Carolina General Assembly, and was later sent as a South Carolina delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

While there, Edward wrote to fellow South Carolina Assembly member Thomas Bee (Wikipedia here), about the recent seizure of letters on a ship that arrived at Boston from Ireland. These letters revealed remarkable detail about British Army recruitment efforts there. Check this out (the bulleting format is mine, to hopefully help with accessibility) –

November 25th, 1775.

I should have done myself the pleasure of writing to you by the return of the express, but was so ill at that time, that I found it impossible. I am now much better, but still greatly distressed with a cough, which I see no prospect of getting rid of till I bend my course to a warmer and better climate. — So much for myself.

Some time last summer, the officers at Boston fitted out a large schooner, and despatched her to Ireland for a supply of tongues, wines, &c.;

On her return a few days ago, she was intercepted by one of our armed vessels in continental pay, and brought into harbour, with all her prog, and an abundance of letters from gentlemen in Ireland to their friends in Boston. These letters have been opened, and have afforded much amusement and some intelligence —

We find by them, 

• that the administration are determined, at all events, to attempt the reduction of America, 

• that Boston will be made strong by twenty-two or twenty-five thousand men, in the course of next winter and spring; 

• that Lord Kenmare has added to the king's bounty, that of ten and sixpence per man, for all who shall enlist under Major Roche; that the city of Cork has followed the example, but more extensively; 

• that Lord Bellamont has the direction of the recruiting parties in that part of the kingdom; that the Roman Catholic priests have been applied to, to stimulate their flocks against us, which they have promised to do if the regiments to be raised be officered by gentlemen of their religious persuasion; in short, 

• that all the powers of hell are to be let loose upon us.

 

On the other hand, intelligence, by the same conveyance, informs us: 

• that all the whigs in the kingdom, (a very few excepted) are warmly interested in our cause, 

• that the common people are not less well affected; 

• that several towns have resolved not to permit any officers to recruit amongst them, and have destroyed the drums of those who have been hardy enough to attempt it; and 

• that the dislike to the service is so great and so general, that those employed therein meet with little or no success...

The letter continues with Rutledge's thoughts on how events were shaping up in America:

"... we have lived in so unsettled a condition, for such a length of time, that I now wish to fight it fairly out, and either establish a connexion consistent with the principles of liberty, and placed upon a permanent basis, or have nothing more to do with them;— the latter I think most likely to be the case. 

The destruction of our towns, and the wanton manner in which it has been effected, a mode of warfare totally exploded among civilized nations, give us little reason to think that they will attempt to make peace; indeed if it be not soon set about, it will be in vain to wish for it for a long while; the minds of the people will be so inflamed by the acts of cruelty hitherto exercised, and daily committing against them, that they will not endure a connexion with men of such savage dispositions."

William Gerard Hamilton MP, 1767 - "every man is obliged to have a musket, a pound of powder ... you have no right to tax them"

William Gerard Hamilton (1729-96) was the Chief Secretary for Ireland and MP for Killybegs in Donegal. After all of the protests about the 1765 Stamp Act, and then its withdrawal, in 1767 Hamilton wrote a warning letter to John Calcraft:

"As to America, I wish we may not burn our fingers, and do our enemies work for them, by quarrelling among ourselves.

There are, in the different provinces, above a million of people, of which we may suppose at least 200,000 men able to bear arms; and not only able to bear arms, but having arms in their possession, unrestrained by any iniquitous Game Act.

In the Massachusetts government particularly, there is an express law, by which every man is obliged to have a musket, a pound of powder, and a pound of bullets always by him: so there is nothing wanting but knapsacks (or old stockings, which will do as well) to equip an army for marching, and nothing more than a Sartorius or a Spartacus at their head requisite to beat your troops and your custom-house officers out of the country, and set your laws at defiance.

There is no saying what their leader may put them upon; but if they are active, clever people, and love mischief as well as I do peace and quiet, they will furnish matter of consideration to the wisest among you, and perhaps dictate their own terms at last, as the Roman people formerly in their famous secession upon the sacred mount.

For my own part, I think you have no right to tax them, and that every measure built upon this supposed right stands upon a rotten foundation, and must consequently tumble down, perhaps, upon the heads of the workmen."

Nationality is not the same as Liberty

 On 28 February 1776, Patrick Henry walked away from an offer to be a colonel in the Continental Army. He had famously announced "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" less than a year before, at the Second Virginia Convention in St John's Church in Richmond on 23 March 1775. He was the commander of all of the patriot militias in Virginia. So why a demotion? Orthodox histories have presented it as a personal affront, but it was an ideological difference.

Henry's focus was on the rights of the people in America. His objective was not to merely replace London rule with a new ruling class of American élites. As Tad Stoermer says in a recent YouTube video:

"the patriot resistance drew on mostly ... the idea that a community exists to promote the mutual safety and prosperity of its members - all of them - and that authority is only legitimate when it serves that purpose. Rights were what the community used to defend itself against power that had stopped serving it and started serving itself".

The danger of this year's USA250 commemorations is that they will reinforce nationalisms – American, British, and Irish – rather than explain rights and liberty. 

Here in the constitutional ambiguity of Northern Ireland, that means being dragged into the "two tribes" mire. People are so invested in their binary choice of nationality that they can't think beyond it. And challenging that binary risks a backlash.

Northern Ireland / the island of Ireland is a poisoned society – but there are many lucrative careers in poison management.

Nationality is not the same as liberty.

The Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, North Carolina, 27 February 1776

It was the backcountry's equivalent of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. It was the last "Highland Charge"...

Thomas McKean, two weeks before the Declaration...

Thomas McKean's father was born in Ballymoney, and according to a 1970s biography, both of his grandfathers had come to Ulster from Scotland, and were involved at Derry and the Boyne. On his maternal side, his grandfather carried battle scars for the rest of his life.

McKean wrote this letter about two weeks before the Declaration of Independence, which he would be involved in finalising the wording of on 2-4 July, rallying the Associators militias of Pennsylvania:

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

To the Associators of Pennsylvania :

Gentlemen: —

The only design of our meeting together was to put an end to our own power in the province, by fixing upon a plan for calling a convention, to form a government under the authority of the people. But the sudden and unexpected separation of the late assembly, has compelled us to undertake the execution of a resolve of Congress, for calling forth 4500 of the militia of the Province, to join the militia of the neighboring colonies, to form a camp for our immediate protection.. We presume only to recommend the plan we have formed to you, trusting that in a case of so much consequence, your love of virtue and zeal for liberty will supply the want of authority delegated to us expressly for that purpose.

We need not remind you that you are now furnished with new motives to animate and support your courage. You are now about to contend against the power of Great Britain, in order to displace one set of villains to make room for another. Your arms will not be enervated in the day of battle with the reflection, that you are to risk your lives or shed your blood for a British tyrant; or that your posterity will have your work to do over again. You are about to contend for permanent freedom, to be supported by a government which will be derived from yourselves, and which will have for its object, not the emolument of one man or class of men only, but the safety, liberty and happiness of every individual in the community. We call upon you, therefore, by the respect and obedience which are due to the authority of the United Colonies to concur in this important measure. The present campaign will probably decide the fate of America. It is now in your power to immortalize your names, by mingling your achievements with the events of the year 1776 — a year which we hope will be famed in the annals of history to the end of time, for establishing upon a lasting foundation the liberties of one quarter of the globe.

Remember the honor of our colonies is at stake. Should you desert the common cause at the present juncture, the glory you have acquired by your former exertions of strength and virtue, will be tarnished; and our friends and brethren, who are now acquiring laurels in the most remote parts of America, will reproach us and blush to own themselves natives or inhabitants of Pennsylvania.

But there are other motives before you. Your houses, your fields, the legacies of your ancestors, or the dearbought fruits of your own industry, and your liberty, now urge you to the field. These cannot plead with you in vain, or we might point out to you further, your wives, your children, your aged fathers and mothers, who now look up to you for aid, and hope for salvation in this day of calamity, only from the instrumentality of your swords.

Remember the name of Pennsylvania. Think of your ancestors and of your posterity.

Signed by the unanimous order of the conference,

Thomas McKean, President.

June 25. 1776.

William Findley on the separation of Church and State

(below is from the Online Library of Liberty, here).

"All who are acquainted with the nature of government, must at once see the absurdity of considering civil government, and the government of the church of Christ, as different branches of the same government.

In all free governments, the governing power is separated into different departments or branches, such as, the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary. These three being exercised by one person, or by one body of men, is, in the opinion of the celebrated Montesquieu, the definition of tyranny….

Now, I enquire, what place or department, in this machine of government, has he left for the ecclesiastical branch, wherein to operate?

It could not act in passing laws—that belongs to the legislature.

It could not execute laws—that belongs to the executive.

It cannot be employed in applying the law to cases as they arise—this belongs to the judiciary. 

Ecclesiastical government, as instituted in national churches, by human authority, is in so far, the ordinance of man; but few of these governments give that branch much share even in its own government".

William Findley

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William Findley reminds us that there is no place within the checks and balances of the modern constitutional state for “ecclesiastical government” to influence the operation of civil government. It may serve a use for the voluntary members of a particular church or religious body to have an “ecclesiastical government” which governs their affairs and their affairs only, but given the enormous civil and military conflicts which emerged during the Reformation the presence of a “4th” branch within the civil government to serve the needs of “the church” would undermine the civil peace which had emerged as a result of religious toleration and “the separation of church and state”.

"the African Trade is injurious to this Colony" - The Rowan County Resolves, North Carolina, 8 August 1774

(pic above: 'Scotch Irish' township in Rowan County, North Carolina - Wikipedia here).

The Rowan County Resolves were drawn up in the town of Salisbury in North Carolina, and were the first to be issued in that colony. The "African Trade" wording is ambiguous, but it seems like the objection was economic rather than moral/ethical. Once again, this is a set of county Resolves which affirms loyalty to the King – but total opposition to the policies of Parliament.

Samuel Young (1735-1793) had been born in County Antrim, Moses Winslow was born and bred in Rowan County, William Kennon would also sign the Mecklenburg Declaration in May 1775. Kennon was a graduate of Princeton and probably wrote the Rowan County Resolves.

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Proceedings of the Freeholders in Rowan County.

August 8th 1774.

At a meeting August 8th 1774, The following resolves were unanimously agreed to.

Resolved, That we will at all times, when ever we are called upon for that purpose, maintain and defend at the Expense of our Lives and Fortunes, his Majesty's Right and Title to the Crown of Great Britain, and his Dominions in America to whose royal Person and Government we profess all due Obedience & Fidelity.

Resolved, That the Right to impose Taxes or Duties to be paid by the Inhabitants within this Province for any purpose whatsoever is peculiar and essential to the General Assembly in whom the legislative Authority of the Colony is vested.

Resolved, That any attempt to impose such Taxes or Duties by any other Authority is an Arbitrary Exertion of Power, and an Infringement of the Constitutional Rights and Liberties of the Colonies.

Resolved, That to impose a Tax or Duty upon Tea by the British Parliament in which the North American Colonies can have no Representation to be paid upon Importation by the inhabitants of the said Colonies, is an Act of Power without Right, it is subversive to the Liberties of the said Colonies, deprives them of their Property without their own Consent, and thereby reduces them to a State of Slavery.

Resolved, That the late cruel and Sanguinary Acts of Parliament to be executed by military force and Ships of War upon our Sister Colony of the Massachusetts Bay and Town of Boston, is a strong Evidence of the corrupt Enfluence obtained by the British Ministry in Parliament and a convincing Proof of their fixed Intention to deprive the Colonies of their Constitutional Rights and Liberties.

Resolved, That the Cause of the Town of Boston is the common Cause of the American Colonies.

Resolved, That it is the Duty and Interest of all the American Colonies, firmly to unite in an indissoluble Union and Association to oppose by every Just and proper means the Infringement of their common Rights and Privileges.

Resolved, That a general Association between all the American Colonies, not to import from Great Britain any Commodity whatsoever (except such things as shall be hereafter excepted by the general Congress of this Province) ought to be entered into and not dissolved till the just Rights of the said Colonies are restored to them, and the cruel Acts of the British Parliament against the Massachusetts Bay and Town of Boston are repealed.

Resolved, That no friend to the Rights and Liberties of America ought to purchase any Commodity whatsoever, except such as shall be excepted, which shall be imported from Great Britain after the general Association shall be agreed upon.

Resolved, That every kind of Luxury, Dissipation and Extravagance, ought to be banished from among us.

Resolved, That manufactures ought to be encouraged by opening Subscriptions for that purpose, or by any other proper means.

Resolved, That the African Trade is injurious to this Colony, obstructs the Population of it by freemen, prevents manufacturers, and other Useful Emigrants from Europe from settling among us, and occasions an annual increase of the Balance of Trade against the Colonies.

Resolved, That the raising of Sheep, Hemp and flax ought to be encouraged.

Resolved, That to be cloathed in manufactures fabricated in the Colonies ought to be considered as a Badge and Distinction of Respect and true Patriotism.

Resolved, That Messrs Samuel Young and Moses Winslow for the County of Rowan, and for the Town of Salisbury William Kennon Esqr be and they are hereby nominated and appointed Deputies, upon the Part of the Inhabitants and Freeholders of this County and Town of Salisbury, to meet such Deputies as shall be appointed by the other Counties and Corporations within this Colony at Johnston Court-House the 20th of this Instant.

Resolved, That at this important and alarming Crisis it be earnestly recommended to the said Deputies at their general Convention that they nominate and appoint one proper Person out of each District of this Province, to meet such Deputies in a general Congress, as shall be appointed upon the Part of the other Continental Colonies in America, to consult and agree upon a firm and indissoluble Union and Association for preserving by the best and most proper means their Common Rights and Liberties.

Resolved, That this Colony ought not to trade with any Colony which shall refuse to join in any Union and Association that shall be agreed upon by the greater Part of the other Colonies on this Continent, for preserving their common Rights and Liberties.

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A full list of the signatories of the Rowan County Resolves is on the Wikipedia page here.

The Hanover Resolves, 4 June 1774 - "our cause we leave to heaven and our rifles".

Loads of local documents, called Resolutions, or, Resolves, were published in the years before the Declaration of Independence. The communities spoke before the country did.

Charles Thomson organised the communities of Pennsylvania to put pen to paper. The first set of Resolves in Pennsylania were from Hanover County, on 4 June 1774. They were written by Colonel Timothy Green whose father, Robert Green, was from County Antrim. They wanted a "closer union" but in the event of the London government "attempting to force unjust laws upon us by the strength of arms, our cause we leave to heaven and our rifles".

The official marker plaque is at Old Derry Presbyterian Church, in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Robert Green had been one of its founders. In 1737 its minister was Rev Richard Sanckey, "a native of the North of Ireland".

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Twelve of the Pennsylvania Resolves are summarised in A Bid For Liberty, the resolutions and declarations of independence adopted in the colony of Pennsylvania, 1774 to 1776, published in 1957.

• It is on HathiTrust here.

The Whigs are Alright - "America and the Irish Revolutionary Movement in the Eighteenth Century" by Michael Kraus (1939)

George Taylor was one of the three Ulster-born signers of the Declaration of Independence. A later biographer wrote that "“He is of course almost forgotten, even in the country where he used to reside; but the old men of the neighbourhood who recollect him, when asked about his character, reply, that ‘he was a fine man and a furious whig’.”

Limited monarchy.

Sovereignty of the people.

Parliament first.

Liberty before loyalty.

Covenant.

They were neither unionists nor nationalists. They were Whigs.

• Benjamin Franklin's essay, Some Good Whig Principles, is online here

• In his 1944 book The Scotch-Irish in Colonial Pennsylvania, Wayland Dunaway wrote:

In time, the radical Whigs became known as the Constitutionalists and the moderate Whigs as the Anti-Constitutionalists. The Scotch-Irish, almost to a man, espoused the cause of the radical Whig party, furnishing its principal following and leadership throughout the Revolutionary struggle.

The actual means by which Pennsylvania was transformed from a proprietary province into an American commonwealth was the new political organization developed by the Scotch-Irish in alliance with the eastern radical leaders of the continental Revolutionary movement.

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This essay from 1939, by Michael Krauss, is excellent.

Although as you'll see below, TW Moody wasn't quite as impressed.

"And who were these people?" - Edward Burgett Welsh (1881-1968)

"... And who were these people? Huguenots from France; men of Reformed faith—continental Presbyterians, that is, from the Palatinate and Switzerland and the Low Countries; Lutherans who remembered the agonies of the Thirty Years' War; German Baptist groups who had suffered at the hands of all the others in Europe; Presbyterians and Seceders (who also were ultra-Presbyterians) from Scotland and Ulster. To a lesser degree the same was true of the Congregationalists from England. Of all those who came to America as victims of religious persecution and settled outside New England, the Scots from Ulster were by far the most numerous.

In Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, they were either predominant or holding a balance of power when the Revolution came on. The events following the killing time in Scotland, which ended in 1688, and those following the siege of Londonderry and the Battle of the Boyne, 1689 and 1690, started a flood of emigration to America.

This went on in increasing volume for half a century, and after a lull it started again in 1773. The great port of entry for the Scotch-Irish was not Boston, New York, Baltimore, Charleston, or even Philadelphia, though many did land at each of these places, but little old Newcastle, Delaware. There are old tombstones here in Allegheny County on which the proud inscription, "landed at Newcastle on the Delaware," can still be deciphered.

These American Presbyterians of 1776 were at most only three generations removed from the hideous miseries of Londonderry and of Lord Claverhouse and his dragoons. By every fireside the hate and fear of religious and civil oppression was kept alive. My mother was born in Ohio in 1843. Her mother had come from County Down as a little child. Yet even my mother was fed in her childhood with those stories of the killing time, and to her the names of Claverhouse and Satan were then synonyms. The defiance John Knox had flung in the face of Queen Mary, and those brave words of his spoken in behalf of his people, "if princes exceed their bounds, Madam, they may be resisted and even deposed," had had no little to do with shaping the convictions and nerving the arms of rough backwoodsmen on the American frontier.

And stung by the lash of the Stamp Act, the closing of Boston harbor, and the like, convictions began to shape themselves into words and deeds..."

- From Some Presbyterian Backgrounds of the Declaration of Independence (1941; online here)

Tad Stoermer on nationalistic "mythology dressed up as education"

 He's speaking about America, but it could be any western entity, including Ireland...

The Greenwich Tea Burning of 1774 – and the Ewing sword from the Boyne

Boston gets all the attention, but almost exactly a year after the Boston Tea Party, there was another almost identical event, this time at Greenwich in New Jersey, on 22 December 1774. Wikipedia page is here.

One of those who took part, disguised as a Native American, was Dr Thomas Ewing (1748-1782). 

"There is record of one James Ewing who was born at Glasgow, Scotland about 1650. His son Findley removed to Londonderry, Ireland in 1690 and there married Jane Porter. 

Findley Ewing was a staunch Presbyterian and an ardent advocate of liberty. For his distinguished bravery at the battle of the Boyne, a notable struggle between William III and James II, he was presented with a sword by King William. 

This token of military merit, afterward found its way to this country and was worn during our Revolutionary War by Dr. Thomas Ewing an army surgeon and great grandson of its original owner. 

By him it was bequeathed as a highly prized family treasure to his son Dr. William Belford Ewing".

• Photo of the Greenwich Tea Burning monument from this website; among those named on it are Thomas Ewing and James Ewing.

 

The Fort Gower Resolves, Virginia Gazette, 5 November 1774

A group of militia officers returning from Dunmore’s War composed the Fort Gower Resolves in the relative remoteness of the western bank of the Ohio River, on 5 November 1774. These were published in the December 22, 1774, issue of the Virginia Gazette. As you'll see below, theses Resolves, like all of the community documents which predate the Declaration of Independence, proclaim loyalty to King George III - while also asserting the officers’ preparedness to defend their rights. This is seen as the first time colonists expressed in writing their willingness to take up arms in defence of their liberties. 

It's a covenant – we give the King our allegiance, as long as he gives us our liberty.

Of course, it was the King's government, then a Tory Party government, which had withdrawn the colonists' liberty. And thanks to the 1689 Bill of Rights, the King could not override Parliament.

Also, I wonder if the men in Fort Gower appreciated the historical, revolutionary, significance of the date of 5 November...

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At a Meeting of the Officers under the Command of his Excellency the Right Honourable the EARL of DUNMORE, convened at Fort Gower, November 5, 1774, for the Purpose of considering the Grievances of BRITISH AMERICA, an Officer present addressed the Meeting in the following Words:

GENTLEMEN,

Having now concluded the Campaign, by the Assistance of Providence, with Honour and Advantage to the Colony, and ourselves, it only remains that we should give our Country the strongest Assurance that we are ready, at all Times, to the utmost of our Power, to maintain and defend her just Rights and Privileges. We have lived for about three Months in the Woods, without any intelligence from Boston, or from the Delegates at Philadelphia. It is possible, from the groundless Reports of designing Men, that our Countrymen may be jealous of the Use such a Body would make of Arms in their Hands at this critical Juncture. That we are a respectable Body is certain, when it is considered that we can live Weeks without Bread or Salt, that we can sleep in the open Air without any Covering but that of the Canopy of Heaven, and that our Men can march and shoot with any in the known World. Blessed with these Talents, let us solemnly engage to one another, and our Country in particular, that we will use them to no Purpose but for the Honour and Advantage of America in general, and of Virginia in particular. It behooves us then, for the Satisfaction of our Country, that we should give them our real Sentiments, by Way of Resolves, at this very alarming Crisis.

Whereupon the meeting made Choice of a Committee to draw up and prepare Resolves for their Consideration, who immediately withdrew; and after some Time spent therein, reported, that they had agreed to and prepared the following Resolves, which were read, maturely considered, and agreed to, nemine contradicente, by the Meeting, and ordered to be published in the Virginia Gazette.

• Resolved, that we will bear the most faithful Allegiance to his Majesty King George III, whilst his Majesty delights to reign over a brave and free People; that we will, at the Expense of Life, and every Thing dear and valuable, exert ourselves in Support of the Honour of his Crown and the Dignity of the British Empire. But, as the Love of Liberty, and Attachment to the real Interests and just Rights of America outweigh every other Consideration, we resolve, that we will exert every Power within us for the Defence of American Liberty, and for the Support of her just Rights and Privileges; not in any precipitate, riotous, or tumultuous Manner, but when regularly called forth by the unanimous Voice of our Countrymen.

• Resolved, that we entertain the greated Respect for his Excellency the Right Honourable Lord DUNMORE, who commanded the Expedition against the Shawnese; and who, we are confident, underwent he great Fatigue of this singular Campaign from no other Motive than the true interest of this Country.

Signed by Order, and in Behalf of the whole Corps.

BENJAMIN ASHBY, Clerk.

"No Kings"? 1776 was a Revolution against Parliament

Pic above from this website.

The "No Kings" protests in the USA over the past months are a curious contradiction. It's a great present-day slogan, but it's not historically true. Thanks to the 1688 Glorious Revolution, almost a century before, in 1776 King George III was pretty much just a figurehead. The problems and tyrannies that the Colonists faced were because of the London Parliament, which from 1770-83, had a Tory Party majority.

Which is why, for a decade, in multiple documents – from The Stamp Act Congress of 1765 to the Second Continental Congress which began in 1775 – the Colonists listed their grievances against what Parliament was doing and appealed to the King to intervene. But even if he'd wanted to, he couldn't. He had no executive power. Since 1689 Britain had been a limited monarchy. Parliament had all the power.

• The timeless preamble to the eventual Declaration of Independence made six comments about Government, and then turned its attention to "the present King of Great Britain". It then listed a series of 27 grievances against him, saying that "our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people".

As James Wilson would say in 1787, “The people of [America] did not oppose the British King but the parliament—the opposition was not [against] a unity but a corrupt multitude.”

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In The Royalist Revolution; Monarchy and the American Founding (Harvard University Press, 2015) Professor Eric Nelson explains this essential point, especially in the current "No Kings" protest era. As the Amazon summary says – The Founding Fathers were rebels against the British Parliament, not the Crown. Here's an intelligent review of the book from the Harvard Law Review.

"No Kings" is potent and relevant for our day, but it inverts the history.

Kings can be tyrants – but Parliaments can also be, and have been, tyrannies.

• Excellent article from September 2025, entitled On the Law of the Declaration of Independence by Professor Adam Tomkins of the University of Glasgow, is online here

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PS – 1776 was primarily a rebellion against a London government that the Founding Father John Ja described as  “wicked Ministers and evil Counsellors”. It is no coincidence that the 1688 Declaration of William Henry Prince of Orange spoke of "evil counsellors" on 20 occasions, and of "wicked Counsellors" with "wicked designs" and "wicked ends".

Edward Rutledge, First Continental Congress, 28 September 1774 – "I came with an idea of getting a Bill of Rights."

His father was from Ulster, some say County Tyrone. Rutledge was just 24 or 25 when, at the First Continental Congress on 28 September 1774, he said "I came with an idea of getting a Bill of Rights". On 14 October, Congress issued its Declaration and Resolves, written by John Dickinson (Wikipedia here).

The eventual Bill of Rights (the amendments to the new United States Constitution) would't be created until 15 years later in 1789. Rutledge had been reading Sir William Blackstone's recent volume Commentaries on the Laws of England written between 1765-69 (Wikipedia here). John Adams' personal copy is online here on Archive.org.

Livingston, Smith & Scott – it sounds like a law firm and it pretty much was. New York, 1765.

They were known as the "Presbyterian Whig Triumvirate" – Williiam Livingston, William Smith, and John Morin Scott. They founded the New York Society Library in 1754, and produced a publication, the Independent Reflector.

Scott was (perhaps) the first to entertain the possibility that one day "Great Britain and her colonies" might separate – "the connection between them ought to cease". A 1765 article, anonymously attributed to "Free Man", was thought to be the handiwork of Scott. George Bancroft, in his History of the United States, quotes extensively from the article, and concludes with this –

"... There never can be a disposition in the colonies to break off their connection with the mother country, so long as they are permitted to have the full enjoyment of those rights to which the English constitution entitles them. They desire no more ; nor can they be satisfied with less." 

Such were the words in which the sober judgment of New York embodied its convictions. They were caught up by the impatient colonies; were reprinted in nearly all their newspapers; were approved of by the most learned and judicious on this continent; and even formed part of the instructions of South Carolina to its agent in England.

Thus revolution proceeded. Virginia marshalled resistance; Massachusetts entreated union; New York pointed to independence.

• The Whigs of Colonial New York is online at JSTOR, here. 

"Gallant Resistance made by their Forefathers " – The Pennsylvania Gazette, 17 June 1756

Recommended reading in America in 1756, almost exactly 20 years before the Declaration of Independence.

John Locke, Algernon Sydney, The Bible, Smollet's A Complete History of England, Magna Carta, the 1689 Bill of Rights, the 1701 Act of Settlement. As it says in the article extract below, "every Briton has the happiness to be born free". That's almost a straight lift from Rutherford's Lex Rex of 1644 – "every man is born free".

Thomas Jefferson & co didn't invent liberty in 1776. They reclaimed it and recharged it. As Professor Gordon S. Wood says, 1776 was a revolution on behalf of the liberties of the British constitution against the rogue government of the Tory Party who came to power in 1770 (previous post & podcast clip of Professor Wood is here).

Isaac Barré's 1765 Speech in Parliament – "Sons of Liberty"

It wasn't Britain v America, Liberty v Tyranny - on a transatlantic scale. Here's an audio recording of the famous speech given in the London Parliament in February 1765 by Dublin-born MP Isaac Barré, in which he coined the phrase 'sons of liberty'. Barré had been a soldier in a British regiment in America during the French & Indian War. The speech was reprinted in newspapers in America, where the colonists adopted his expression "sons of liberty" as the name of a new organisation.

“They planted by your care? No! your oppressions planted them in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle and I take upon me to say the most formidable of any people upon the face of God’s Earth. And yet, actuated by the principles of true English liberty, they met all these hardships with pleasure, compared with those they suffered in their own country, from the hands of those who should have been their friends.

They nourished up by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of them: as soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over them, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some member of this House sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon them; men whose behaviour on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice, some, who to my knowledge were glad by going to a foreign country to escape being brought to the bar of a court of justice in their own.

They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defence, have exerted a valour amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defence of a country, whose frontier, while drenched in blood, its interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And believe me, remember I this day told you so, that same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first, will accompany them still.

But prudence forbids me to explain myself further. God knows I do not at this time speak from motives of party heat, what I deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart, however superior to me in general knowledge and experience the reputable body of this House may be, yet I claim to know more of America than most of you, having seen and been conversant in that country.

The people I believe are as truly loyal as any subjects the King has, but a people jealous of their liberties and who will vindicate them, if ever they should be violated, but the subject is too delicate and I will say no more.”

Tad Stoermer on the mythological retro-fitting of Thomas Paine

Brilliant summary here. This year, the 250th anniversary, there's going to be a lot of myth-reinforcement. Few will be interested in challenging the two and a half centuries of nationalistic baggage with which the American revolution has been subsequently packaged. Challenging orthodoxy is tricky when reinforcing orthodoxy pays the bills. 

There's been a bit of highly selective Paine-worship over the past week, marking the 250th anniversary of his pamphlet Common Sense. Here's a corrective dose of reality –

 

John Dickinson's writings were more influential than Paine (see previous post here), and had put in place a decade of thought and philosophy, grounded in the previous Glorious Revolution; Paine arrived very late to the party, in November 1774, and only publishing from spring 1775 - as Stoermer correctly says here "most of the real American revolution had already happened before Paine ever set foot on America's shores", between 1765-1775.

So, as Tad Stoermer explains above, the myth of Paine began almost at day one, when John Page selectively extracted the politically useful parts of Common Sense, and printed it in newspapers which had a far wider readership than the print run of the complete pamphlet itself. 

The Scots-Irishman poet, David Bruce, refers unfavourably to Paine in his 1801 collection. Check out Brother Tamie, A Song. 

• A more substantial Common Sense is the philosophy that emerged as part of the 1700s Scottish Enlightment (which sounds a bit fluffy as a term anyway) - Scottish Common Sense Realism. That's a subject for another day...

Revolutionary Psalms – Isaac Watts, the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution

Isaac Watts' The Psalms of David was first published in 1719. His father, also called Isaac, had been a local 'nonconformist' church pastor in Southampton, who was imprisoned at least twice during the regime of King Charles II. When James II became monarch in 1685, the public executions of his Bloody Assizes included two locations along the south coast not very far from Southampton; 12 men at Weymouth and five men at Wareham were sliced and diced by order of his majesty. Isaac junior had just turned 11 years old when the hanging, drawing and quartering began.

"... The trials of the parents made, as may be conceived, a deep impression upon the mind of the son; the adversities of his early years were remembered by him in after life ; and doubtless here originated that ardent attachment to civil and religious liberty which marked his character, and which led his muse to hail its establishment with exultation, when the dynasty of the tyrannical Stuarts was driven from the throne..."*

 

So, when Isaac published his The Psalms of David, he added a dedication to Psalm 75 which read:

Power and Government from God Alone 

Apply'd to the Glorious Revolution of King William, 

or the Happy Accession of King George to the Throne

 

Watts' The Psalms of David was probably the most-used sacred song book in the English-speaking Atlantic World; the first edition to be printed in America was by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1740. The Psalm 75 dedication remained throughout an estimated 39 editions that were printed on both sides of the ocean.

After the American Revolution, with America newly independent, the first edition of Watts to be printed was in Newburyport, Massachussetts in 1791. The printer, John Mycall, revised the intro to Psalm 75 to reflect the new era –

 

Power and Government from God Alone 

Apply'd to the glorious revolution in America, 

 July 4th, 1776 

 

Ezra Stiles, the President of Yale, wrote this summary in his diary:

"This year has been published the fortieth Edition of Dr. Watts's Psalms: it was printed at Newburyport in Massachusetts by Mr. Mycall, Printer. He with the Advice & Assist of neighbors ministers & others, has made some Alterations in Psalms where G. Britain is mentioned, & references to the King of Gt. Britain as in the 75th Psalm. At first it may seem as if these alterations were many: however they really are but few. Thus the Ps. Book is well adapted to the Ch in America"

• * The Life, Times and Correspondence of the Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D. by Thomas Milner (1834) is online here

• The American Revisions of Watts's Psalms, by Louis F. Benson (1903) is online here.

Below: The American edition with the revised dedication