that they were ready for greater autonomy and an expanded role in the making of decisions impacting upon their lives. Psychologically, they were ready for anything but new imperial restraints on their social, political and economic activities.
Under the colonial governorship of Lord George Grenville, efforts to impose taxes and restraints on the colonists took shape; the Stamp Act, for example, was but one of several measures that were ill-received by many in the colonies, who at first resorted to petitions directed to Parliament and the Crown in which a redress of grievances was sought. There was nothing especially ôradicalö about such activities, which were bolstered by a flurry of pamphlets and broadsides that laid out an American position vis-a-vis essential political rights. As Stephen Hopkins of Rhode Island wrote in a November 1764 pamphlet titled The Rights of the Colonies Examined, ôBritish subjects are governed only agreeably to laws which [they] themselves have consentedà. Those who are governed at the will of othersàwithout their own consent, and against their will, are in the condition of slaves.ö When the Sugar Act of 1765 was passed by Parliament, many in the colonies who had not even considered rebellion began to give action against the British Crown new thought; however, there were few in the colonies who considered at this juncture that a violent revolution would be needed.
Eric Foner believes that the radical roots of the Revolution were centered in the wide distribution of property that characterized the colonies and created an opportunity for a far greater level of social mobility than was available in England herself. Liberty became more than an ideal for the colonials, who saw liberty as a fundamental right that should be available to all me. Most Americans did not set out to transform the rights of Englishmen into the rights of man. At the outset, opposition to British imperial policies ...