Page 37 - Beers With Our Founding Fathers

A Patriot’s view of the history and direction of our Country

The Road to Independence – American Enlightenment

(1763 to 1775)
At this point we have seen a brief history of how the pilgrims

came to North America and formed governments based upon
English common law, Christianity, and democracy under the crown.

Known as the British Atlantic colonies, they essentially had no
representation. For the next 150 years, the colonists would be

forced to pay for the fiscal and governing ineptitude of the king and
his appointed governors and representatives of the colonies. By this

time England had a bi-camera parliament – Lords and Commons.
The House of Lords were representatives by inherited title, and the

House of Commons were common people elected to parliament.
Because North America, like other English colonies, was a territory

of England – the colonies were not equally, and only figuratively,
represented in parliament and limited to colonial provincial

governing with an appointed royal governor. The colonists were
otherwise content with being subjects of the crown. The decades

growing dissent was primarily due to taxation without
representation and violation of English common laws pre-dating and

including the Magna Carta.
The road to independence was long and complicated – as has

been the road our Country is presently on. Also settling in North
America, with colonies, was France; this included Canada. In Europe

there was an empirical war between England, France and Spain

(none were allied, but all at war with each other) from 1756 to 1763
(the war had been ongoing before this, undeclared until May of
1756). This was known in Europe as the Seven Years War and was

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