On the eve of the American Revolution, most American thinkers had embraced the idea of all rights (and, therefore, sovereignty) being inherited.[1] Americans, as brothers and descendents of Englishmen, were entitled to the rights inherited from the English through the development of Anglo-Saxon common law and through the several political battles, such as those witnessed most blatantly with King John signing the Magna Carta in 1215, the development of Parliament in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the ascendancy of Parliament in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Parliament not only embodied the will of the people, but it also served as the ultimate authority and the sovereign, at least in conjunction with the Crown. Americans, prior to the fall of 1774, saw themselves in this tradition, inheriting the rights of the common law and of Englishmen. The legal scholar and future signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrolton, put it succinctly:

How came many unconstitutional powers to be exercised by the crown, and suffered by parliament? for instance, the dispensing power—the answer is obvious; it required the wisdom of ages, and accumulated efforts of patriotism, to bring the constitution its is present point of perfection; a thorough reformation could not be effected at once; upon the whole fabrick is stately, and magnificent, yet a perfect symmetry, and correspondence of parts is wanting; in some places, the pile appears to be deficient in strength, in others the rude and unpolished taste of our Gothic ancestors is discoverable.[2] [Read more...]