Disputes on Sovereignty During the American Revolution 309 affairs, warned his fellow members that the colonists were focusing on the assertion of Britain’s sovereignty rather than on Britain’s right to regulate the Atlantic trade: “it was not the amount of the duties . . . that was complained of, but the principle upon which the laws were founded, the supremacy and legislative authority of Parliament—a principle essential to the existence of empire” (Reid, 1986-1993: III, 288). In 1773, Governor Thomas Hutchinson challenged the General Court of Massachusetts with the claim: “I know of no Line that can be drawn between the supreme Authority of Parliament and the total independence of the Colonies: It is impossible there shall be two independent Legislatures in one and the same State” (Reid, 1981: 20). On behalf of the colonists, James Bowdoin protested that “if Supreme Authority includes unlimited Authority, the Subjects of it are emphatically Slaves” (Reid, 1981: 34). John Adams added that the governor’s opinion on sovereignty would make the Massachusetts legislature “a mere Phantom; limited, controulled, superceded and nullified at the Will of another” (Reid, 1981: 143). When defending the Coercive Acts of 1774, punishing Massachusetts in particular, Earl Gower informed the House of Lords: “the great question in issue is, the supremacy of this country and the subordinate dependence of America” (Cobbett, 1806-1820: XIX, 320-321). In March 1774, Lord North, the head of the British ministry, made the constitutional nature of the crisis very clear when he asserted: We are now disputing . . . with those who have maintained that we have as a parliament no legislative right over them. That we are two independent states under the same Prince . . . we are not entering into a dispute between internal and external taxes, not between taxes laid for the purpose of revenue and taxes laid for the regulation of trade, not between representation and taxation, or legislation and taxation. But we are now to dispute the question of whether we have or have not any authority in that country. (Thomas, 1991: 51)
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