Excerpt from A History of the United States, Vol. 3: The American Revolution 1761-1789

"Government is a conditional compact between king and people. ... A violation of the covenant by either party discharges the other from its obligation." "An Act [of Parliament] against the Constitution is void." In these thirty words Patrick Henry and James Otis denied the divine origin of the British kingship and the legislative supremacy of the British Parliament, and substituted therefor the Common Law and the eternal rights of man. Moreover, these phrases shadow forth the reason for the secession of the old English North American colonies from the British Empire and the principles which underlie our own system of government to this day. There was nothing new or strange in them. They had been held in England for centuries, but no one, since the days of Cromwell and his Ironsides, had thought of applying them to the settlement of ordinary everyday affairs of political life.

Commercialism, the desire for advantage and profit in trade and industry, was at the bottom of the struggle between England and America, the immutable principles of human association were brought forward to justify colonial resistance to British selfishness.

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