American Democracy in Context. Joseph A. Pika

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СКАЧАТЬ includes many provisions (or “chapters”) that are not so relevant today. Others, however, stand as a fundamental basis for the rule of law—the idea that even the most powerful leader of government is bound by the law. The most important of these is Chapter 39, which emphatically states the requirement of due process of law, or of fair procedures:

      No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.⁵

      This provision of the Magna Carta limited the power of kings and later served as the basis for the guarantees in the U.S. Constitution that the government shall not take a person’s life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Modern-day Miranda warnings are an outgrowth of this.

      Description

      This Miranda warning card, developed for Kansas City police officers, is intended to ensure Americans’ due process rights.

      Mikael Karlsson / Alamy Stock Photo

      The fact that King John was forced to sign this document set an important precedent of free men standing up to the king. In 1297, the Magna Carta was placed in the statute books of England, where it remains to this day. By the end of the fourteenth century, the Magna Carta had come to be viewed not as any ordinary statute but as the fundamental law of the realm. Thus, opponents of King Charles I used it to justify rebellion in 1642.

      Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, and the English Bill of Rights

      In 1642, 36 years after King James I had issued the first charters establishing American colonies, civil war erupted in England. James I (who ruled from 1602 to 1625) and his son and successor, Charles I, believed in the divine right of kings—that is, the idea that kings derived their right to rule from God and were not accountable to their subjects. They thus believed that they had absolute control over Parliament (the legislature in England) and could, for example, impose taxes without the consent of Parliament. Charles I took other unilateral steps as well, including arbitrary arrests and detentions, quartering troops in private homes, and even imposing martial law. He summoned and dissolved Parliament at will and claimed an absolute right to veto any legislation it passed. Increasingly angered, Parliament and its supporters waged a civil war against the king and his supporters.

      In rising up against Charles I, Parliament invoked the Magna Carta and argued that the king was violating the rights of individuals. For example, opponents of the king argued that if he could tax without the consent of Parliament, then the English people and Parliament, their representative assembly, were in a state of servitude to the king. As we will see, concern about taxation without representation later became a key issue in the road to revolution in the American colonies.

      The decades that followed were rocky times in England. Charles I was eventually beheaded. When his son, Charles II, tried to succeed him, another civil war ensued. Charles II fled to France, and Parliament declared England a “free state,” to be governed as a commonwealth without a king. That commonwealth lasted from 1651 until 1659. Charles II returned to England and was restored to the throne in 1660. King Charles II was now careful not to oppose Parliament, but his brother, James II, who succeeded him in 1685, tried to reassert the divine right of kings and to rule without Parliament. As a result, he was run out of the country in what became known as the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

      The action of James II led Parliament to enact the English Bill of Rights, a statute that spelled out the basic rights of Englishmen and limited the power of future monarchs. Among other things, the Bill of Rights declared freedom from taxation by royal prerogative: Only Parliament, the representative of the people, could impose taxes. Together, the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights were considered to be part of the country’s “unwritten” constitution, which came to be seen by British citizens as containing fundamental, inviolable principles.

      “No Taxation Without Representation”

      Some things never change: People hate taxes—or, at least, taxes that seem excessive or otherwise unfair. The colonists seethed at taxes imposed on them by Parliament because they considered them not only unfair but a flagrant violation of parliamentary power. Since the colonists had no elected representatives in Parliament, they believed that these taxes violated a fundamental principle of the English Bill of Rights: no taxation without representation. The Bill of Rights declared freedom from taxation by royal prerogative and instead gave Parliament the power to tax because that body represented the people. Anger over taxation without representation is, in no small measure, what led to the American Revolution.

      The Sugar Act and Stamp Act

      The first seeds of revolution were planted in 1764 when Parliament enacted the American Revenue Act, better known as the Sugar Act. People in England had been complaining of too many taxes, and so Parliament used the act to shift some of the tax burden to the American colonists. The Sugar Act imposed duties on certain foreign goods imported into the American colonies—sugar and other goods, including coffee, some wines, and pimiento.

      The timing could not have been worse, as the colonies were facing a bad economy. Not only did the new duties on imported goods increase prices for the colonists, but they also hurt American manufacturers of rum by making ingredients more expensive. As a result, the American rum trade was threatened to be priced out of the market; foreign buyers who had previously imported American rum now turned to other sources. Colonists reacted harshly to the Sugar Act. They quickly took up the rallying cry of “no taxation without representation.” The Massachusetts assembly proclaimed that the act deprived the colonists of “the most essential Rights of Britons.”⁶

      Parliament made matters even worse for the colonists by imposing the Stamp Act the following March. From 1756 to 1763, the British had fought the French and Indian War in Canada and on the western frontier of the colonies; these battles were part of a larger struggle among a number of countries that transpired in Europe and elsewhere. British victory in the French and Indian War had left the country deep in debt, and the Stamp Act was an attempt by Parliament to raise money, ostensibly to pay for Britain’s continued military presence in North America after the war. The act imposed a direct tax on a wide array of printed materials in the colonies, including everything from legal documents to newspapers to playing cards. Such materials had to either be printed on specially marked paper or have tax stamps affixed to them to indicate that the tax had been paid.

      American newspapers bitterly opposed the Stamp Act. The Pennsylvania Journal showed its displeasure by marking the location where the stamp would be placed with a skull and crossbones in its October 24, 1765 edition.

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      The Stamp Act galvanized the colonies. Several colonial assemblies adopted resolutions denouncing the tax. The first and most famous was a series of resolutions passed by the Virginia House of Burgesses on May 29, 1765. These Virginia Stamp Act Resolutions (also known as the “Virginia Resolves”) stated that “the taxation of the people by themselves, or by persons chosen by themselves to represent them, … is the distinguishing characteristic of British freedom.”⁷ In so doing, the Virginia Resolves invoked the spirit of the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights.

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