Page 37 - Beers With Our Founding Fathers
P. 37

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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