oned right of kings. This was an essential step, of course, for any revolution and Locke wrote his treatises "to justify the glorious and bloodless revolution of 1688," saying that he hoped they would serve to "establish the Throne of our Great Restorer, Our present King William--to make good his Title, in the consent of the People'" (quoted in Squadrito 95). The revolution, Locke believed, was a necessary step taken by the people to protect their natural rights and the suggestion that a people could be responsible for their own selection of rulers and that even a monarch could only rule with the consent of the governed was still a hotly contested notion a century later.
The constitutionally limited monarchy, which was imposed on William when he succeeded the deposed James II, even included representation in the House of Commons which "allowed for the participation of His Majesty's subjects in the affairs of government" and the English were enormously proud of possessing the only constitution in the world "specially dedicated to liberty" (Wood 13). The American colonists who, of course, considered themselves Britons, were fully aware of this progression of ideas and the pride in constitutionally guaranteed representation. The colonists read the same literature, law, and history "as their brethren at home read, and they drew most of their conceptions of society and their values from their reading" (Wood 12). Thus, if the Anglo-American colonists were known for their stubborn resistance to monarchical rule this habit "came principally from their Englishness" (Wood 12).
It is not surprising, therefore, that Locke's Second Treatise of Government began to exert great power over the imaginations of Americans who found themselves in the difficult position of being taxed without representation. Taxation was not, in English usage, an attribute of the governing power. Instead the king requested the tax and "the Commons, and the Com...