The nineteenth charge was, “For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences.” Although the provision for this had existed since the time of Henry VIII for treason, in fact nobody had been transported for trial in George III’s reign. All this amounted to in terms of eighteenth-century trade was that the American colonies were part of the British Empire. The sixteenth charge attacked the King “for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world.” In fact, the navigation and trade laws that restricted colonial commerce dated back to Oliver Cromwell in 1651, and were instrumental in placing the American colonies within the British trading bloc and outside rival ones.
To take some of Jefferson’s accusations virtually at random, the second charge was of George having “forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained.” The law of suspension, necessary because of the distance across the Atlantic, had been in operation since 1708, and was a sensible precaution against laws being overturned months after they had gone into operation. (John Adams estimated that at the Revolution’s start another one-third were Loyalists and the last one-third were waiting to see who would win.) Of course, George III also wanted his American subjects to enjoy life, liberty (as he conceived it) and the pursuit of happiness, until such time that roughly one-third of them started to rebel against him. The Declaration is read out in some towns on the anniversary of its adoption by the Continental Congress, mixing as it does some gorgeous prose about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with the second two-thirds of the document which is almost totally factually false. Yet even today, nearly 250 years later, the 28 clauses of the Declaration are still accepted by many Americans as almost Holy Writ in its entirety.
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