What Americans were really objecting to had nothing to do with constitutional principles. their objection was not to Parliament's constitutional right to levy certain kinds of taxes as opposed to others, but to its effort to collect any. — Bernard Bailyn Copy Share Image
In England the practice of "virtual" representation provided reasonably well for the actual representation of the major interests of the society, and it raised… — Bernard Bailyn Copy Share Image
Instantly available without continuous presence is probably the best role a mother can play. — Bernard Bailyn Copy Share Image
“For the primary goal of the American Revolution which transferred American life and introduced a new era in human history, was not the overthrow… — Bernard Bailyn Copy Share Image
The theory of politics that emerges from the political literature of the pre-Revolutionary years rests on the belief that what lay behind every political scene, the ultimate explanation of every political controversy, was the disposition of power. — Bernard Bailyn Copy Share
The idea of sovereignty current in the English speaking world of the 1760's was scarcely more than a century old. It had first emerged… — Bernard Bailyn Copy Share Image
“Power always and everywhere had had a pernicious, corrupting effect upon men. It "converts a good man in private life to a tyrant in office." It acts upon men like drink: it "is known to be intoxicating in its nature"—"too intoxicating and liable to abuse." And nothing within man is sufficiently strong to guard against these effects of power—certainly not… — Bernard Bailyn Copy Share
In effect the people were present through their representatives, and were themselves, step by step and point by point, acting in the conduct of… — Bernard Bailyn Copy Share Image
The wielders of power did not speak for it, nor did they naturally serve it. Their interest was to use and develop power, no… — Bernard Bailyn Copy Share Image
Defiance to constituted authority leaped like a spark from one flammable area to another, growing in heat as it went. — Bernard Bailyn Copy Share Image
Whatever deficiencies the leaders of the American Revolution may have had, reticence, fortunately, was not one of them. — Bernard Bailyn Copy Share Image
The classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but thet are everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of thought — Bernard Bailyn Copy Share Image
Incorporating in their colorful, slashing, superbly readable pages, the major themes of the "left" opposition under Walpole, these libertarian tracts, emerging first in the… — Bernard Bailyn Copy Share Image
