Ok, different topic. I was again watching 1776, the musical from 1972 (more or less) in celebration of America’s Bicentennial. Very well made movie. Historically accurate (*especially* for a movie) though scarcely complete. For instance, Sam Adams’ contributions are completely ignored, and — as it turns out — he was even more instrumental in all of it than was John Adams, who is so prominently featured in this movie. (But that matched the thinking of the time — new data has come to light since, and John’s work is scarcely discredited in any way by that. As I said, accurate, just now complete.)(1)(2)
Regardless, Americans are always taught, as the characters of the movie even proclaim quite readily, that what the “colonials” were doing (i.e., breaking away from England) was *Treason*.
Was it?
Why were they breaking from England? Simple: while being proclaimed English Citizens, they were being treated somewhat less, as a thing to be exploited, rather than as Full Citizens(3). Run away taxes, no respect for individual rights or property or due process of law, etc.
So… in fact, the Crown (that is, the British Government) broke faith with them first.
Government (any government, even totalitarian) runs by mutual agreement with the citizens it governs. “I will do this and you will do that and here’s what we each get in exchange, and here are the penalties for not living up to it.” That’s a contract. It might be a good and worthy contract, it might be a very bad contract, but it’s the contract of government.
When a citizen violates the contract, it’s called Treason.
So, by that clause alone the governing council of the colonies (i.e., Congress) was in fact in a state of Treason with regards to the England. However, they were reacting to the British Crown’s having violated the contract between government and governed in the first place. That changes things.
Government must be held liable for its failures, at least as much as the citizens are for theirs. Perhaps even more so, as what a citizen does has limited repercussions, but what a government does can have major, profound long lasting effects.
So, let’s see: when the government violates the contract, what happens? Hmm… where’s the clause that covers that one? I don’t see it anywhere in this voluminous pile of legality.
Excuse me while I look for that. Must be here some place…
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(1) There are also a couple of scenes that just plain never happened. Such as when Thomas Jefferson’s wife is brought in. In truth his wife was a fragile thing that would never have undertaken such a journey. But it made a nice romantic moment for the movie. Hollywood… Or Broadway rather, as it was a Broadway play first.
(2) John Adams is treated in the 1776 story as utterly indispensable to the Revolution. Well, he was, but the fact is all of them were utterly indispensable, even those who nearly nearly caused it to fail. If you would like to know more you can read John Adam’s own diaries, Ben Franklin’s diaries, or Barbara Tuckman’s more modern work, “The March of Folly,” which is quite readable and eye opening.
(3) This, in fact, has much to do with why the British Empire faded away into the British Commonwealth, after also losing India as a colony, some bankrupting world wars [no one wins a war], and such and so forth. The proclamation given a colony that “you are now England” and have all the rights that accompany that statement, but in actual fact are being treated at best as 2nd class citizens and at worst as slaves was a gross violation of the contract. [BTW: The much discussed practice of slavery in America’s past and so much still a factor in its Politics was, in fact, simply inherited from England — though that hardly excuses it. There is no excuse for slavery, in any form. Though it’s thousands of years old as a practice and though illegal in some forms continues today in many forms even some disguised ones] If England had in centuries past kept up its side of the bargain (that is, the agreement between the government and the governed) chances are good it would still be the British Empire and perhaps it would be a complete world government now. Hard to say. Smacks of a Harry Turtledove alternate history tale, doesn’t it? Oh well… might-have-beens. Perhaps the present situation is better, perhaps worse. It’s what is, though.