I have added a new post to the Copy Book: Traitorous Designs.
It is the text of the proclamation issued by King George III on August 23rd, 1775, in response to the growing rebellion in Britain’s colony in Massachusetts. The Proclamation reminded the colonists of the British government’s legal claims on their obedience, and of the colonists’ moral duty to the State that protected them. The King regretted to say that the colonists had been led astray by British activists, and called upon both law enforcement and the general public to find these men and turn them in.
The weakness in the King’s argument, as critics pointed out at the time, was that he thought solely in terms of his legal right to territories and the obedience of the people who lived on them, and ignored the rights of his subjects and what they could expect from their Government. The Americans were Englishmen like any others, but the King who claimed to protect them had not only refused them democratic representation, he had sent his troops against them. His angry proclamation did not convince vocal critics such as Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox, who went on speaking out despite the King’s attempted censorship, and it did not convince the Englishmen of America, who declared their independence on July 4th, 1776.