Many accusations were leveled at the British government, and in particular, it's head, King George III, among them being; "cutting off [America's] Trade with all parts of the world, imposing Taxes on [the colonies] without [their] Consent, taking away [the colonies"] Charters, abolishing [their] most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of [their] Governments, suspending [their] own Legislatures, and declaring themselves (England) invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever
" .
But perhaps the most important of these accusations and that which is the most telling about the attitude of the American colonists is the argument against "abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies" . This accusation tells us that England was trying to treat the colonies differently than it treated its own citizens in England, and it was this inequality that was the heart of the decision to declare independence from British rule. We can see references to this inequality in both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, but we also see it, perhaps in a more pronounced way in the revolutionary literature of the time. Thomas Paine, in Common Sense of 1776 outlines the inadequacies of the British government as they pertain to the governing of the American Colonies, and highlights the inequality inherent in the English government, that lead to the unequal treatment of the colonies. .
" is there any inhabitant in America so ignorant, as not to know, that according to what is called the PRESENT CONSTITUTION, that this continent can make no laws but what the king gives it leave to; and is there any man so unwise, as not to see, that (considering what has happened) he will suffer no law to be made here, but such as suit HIS purpose.
