Remembering My Country (II)

Much of the dispute over taxation was precipitated by Great Britain's growing debt precipatated by the French and Indian War from 1756 to 1763. Her debt had risen by 58 million pounds from a base of 130 million pounds. This caused Parliament to search for new sources of revenue.

Britain won the global war with the French. However, in the course of the war she had to buy mercenaries in order to fight Her land battles in Europe. Therefore, She was in a deep debt crisis that was unprecedented for the time.

In 1761, before the end of the war, Britain made a more vigorous effort to collect customs duties from the Colonies. Courts, prompted by Customs officials , issued writs of assistance. These were orders autrhorizing police force to be used to search for smuggled goods on the private premises of American merchants. The Americans vehemently protested this as a violation of their rights as Englishmen. The brilliant young Bostonian lawyer James Otis made this argument in the courts. Otis argued that the courts had no legal right to issue the writs because Parliament had no legal right to authorize them. This argument by Otis was the intellectual spark that lit the American Rebellion. It was the first American legal argument disputing Parliament's unlimited right to make laws for the Colonies. The Americans were gaining the habit of governing themselves and they were preparing the intellectual and legal arguments to justify that position.

Long before bullets and lead were shot into Redcoat bellies, Americans were forming the philosophical arguments to justify the purpose of an American Nation. That purpose was Self-Government. The idea that you reading these words, whoever you are, have the duty to govern yourself in a lawful manner and that you have the Right to participate in the formation of those laws that you have the duty to obey. This is the relationship between duty and law, between obediance and freedom, between security and Liberty. They are all necessary to one another because they form a whole called Freedom under the Law.

Today, you celebrate your duty and right to govern yourself. Tomorrow, and every other day, you practice and defend that duty and right by thinking, reading, writing, debating, and governing. That is the duty and right of an American. That is the teleological purpose of our American nation. That is why I am still proud when I call myself an American.