How important is the Declaration of Arbroath..

[macwilkin]

Another repsonse-

Since there appears to be some dicussion regarding taxes and the Revolution - yes I know I am behind the times in this thread, but right now I am working 12 hr days 6 days/week - i refer you to Fowler's Empires at War. Seems the colonies were promised the King would cover their costs. Another case of a politician making a promise he could not keep.

No, he did -- he was the only one who paid for it, because the American colonial assemblies were too cheap to pony up and help pay for their own defence. Ben Franklin couldn't even get them to agree to the Albany Plan of Union in 1754 to work together for mutual self-defence. "He" aslo paid for the British garrison that defeated Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763.

And it was William Pitt, not the King, who offered for London to pay for the raising and equipping of colonial provinical units in the French & Indian Wars. Contrary to the myth, George III had little to do with the disagreement; Parliament and a string of PM's did after William Pitt took sick. It would be interesting to see what would have happened had men like Pitt and Edmund Burke, who agreed with the colonists, would have done -- perhaps we would still be part of the Commonwealth today.

T.