On the eve of the American Revolution, Edmund Burke MP urged Parliament to extend to Americans the same Constitutional rights enjoyed by Englishmen. He warned that two such peoples could not be united by mere compliance with government regulations; what united them was a shared sense of Englishness, as heirs of the legacy of liberty inherited from our common forefathers.

Burke went on to remind the House of Commons that the unity of our own country came not from government regulation, but from a feeling among the public that they were invested in a noble project of liberty. Were that feeling ever lost, no regulation could rekindle it, and even the peerless Royal Navy would be weakened beyond recovery.

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