He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.


This grievance drafted in the Declaration of Independence, addressed directly to King George III, was put forth in response to the threat of, and eventual realization of the dissolution of the valued right to representation in the legislature of local colonial government. In particular, this complaint alludes to the action taken by the British authority in relation to the implementation of the Quebec Act and the Massachusetts Government Act of 1774.
With the conclusion of the French and Indian War, a significant portion of land and roughly six thousand inhabitants were transferred to British authority[1]. The Canadian territory and the subjects acquired in this British victory, under the Quebec Act, were awarded a government without the luxury of a representative assembly[2]. Despite the fact that even under French governance the province had not been granted this representative body, this action produced a wave of anxiety amongst the American colonists[3]. The colonists feared that this “large [district] of people” in the newly created English colony were subject to a government and its laws that afforded no popular representation, a form of administration that the colonies deemed an inestimable right. Although this form of administration was reserved to Quebec, colonists considered this course of events “ominous”[4]. What’s more, as the Act expanded the territory of Quebec[5], colonists hoping to settle westward would be subjected to “Canada’s autocratic government”[6]. Thus, the absence of popular “representation in the legislature” was met with fear and anger.
While the Quebec Act threatened representative government in the Americas, the Massachusetts Government Act of the same year directly disposed of representative government in this particular colony. The act was implemented in response to the Boston Tea Party, designed to hamper further disobedience, and as a demonstration of the authority of the Crown and Parliament[7]. The original constitution of the colony, established in 1691, was effectively altered, to the horror of the public[8]. Through the previous constitution it was established that the king had the authority of appointing the governor of the colony[9], while the right to elect the council of the governor and the representative assembly of freeholders remained in the hands of the colonists[10]. With the advent of the act, however, the authority of the election of the council of the governor was assigned to the king[11], thereby “[transferring] all governing power in the colony to the executive”[12]. The annual election of councilors, previously “vested…in the assemblies”, was henceforth terminated[13]; colonists of Massachusetts were forced to “relinquish [their] right”, a right held by the colony since its foundation. This reorganization of the government enjoyed by Massachusetts ensured that the colony was “[subjected]…to direct Parliamentary control”[14]. While the act was designed to instill respect for the inherent authority of Parliament, Americans viewed these series of events as “[setting] a dangerous precedent in America…against popular assemblies”[15]. Parliament had succeeded in angering its colonists by forcing a government upon the colony void of popular “representation in legislature”.
These two acts ensured that the colonial expectation of their entitlement to representative government was done away with, and these laws imposed on the public an unnatural system of governance in direct conflict with their rights. This was concluded by the outraged American colonial public to be a tyrannical act on behalf of the British Crown, and an act that would not be tolerated.

[1] David M. Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen and Thomas A. Bailey, The American Pageant: Volume I to 1877 (Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 133.
[2] Ibid.
[3] John M. Blum et al, The National Experience: A History of the United States (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanvich, 1981), 101.
[4] Blum, et al, National Experience, 101.
[5] Lester D. Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 31.
[6] Blum, John et al, National Experience, 101.
[7] Ibid., 100.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 51.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid., 100.
[12] Langley, Age of Revolution, 31.
[13] Yale Law School, "Great Britain : Parliament: The Massachusetts Government Act; May 20, 1774," <http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/amerrev/parliament/mass_gov_act.htm>, 2007.
[14] Blum, et al, National Experience, 101.
[15] Kennedy, Cohen and Bailey, American Pageant, 133.

Sydney Dale-McGrath