Lines 27-39 describe growing commitment to the parliamentary representation starting from the seventeenth century, and culminating in "the English [accepting] the idea that the parliamentary representatives of the people were omnipotent" by the eighteenth century.
AneeshUJune 4, 2022
Doesn't this explanation support (B)? I don't understand why (B) is wrong.
AneeshUJune 4, 2022
Line 40 also seems to support this:
"The citizens of these colonies did not look upon the English Parliament with such fond eyes, nor did they concede that their own assemblies possessed such wide powers."
Emil-KunkinJune 7, 2022
Hi AneeshU,
I think these lines do support the idea that Americans would have considered commitment to parliamentary representation as a source of debate. However, I think that the issue was not the commitment of the English to representation, but that of the colonists. While the colonists had an issue with the parliament, it is not clear that they had an issue with the commitment of regular english voters to the parliament.
AneeshUJune 8, 2022
Thanks Emil,
Can you please expand on your answer?
My reasoning was that as English subjects, they would be much more likely to oppose changes to their political system that they didn't agree with as opposed to the largely inconsequential question of loyalty to political tradition, which was more about pride. As I understand, the support provided by regular English voters to Parliament would have incensed the colonists more than the question of loyalty to political tradition, leading to a greater likelihood that it would be a source of debate. Isn't this fairly logical since at this time the colonies were under English control? There's a line in the passage, "written charters granted by the Crown", which allows us to infer that the power structure between the English and the colonies was not equal, implying that decisions made in England, whether by either the king or the Parliament, had an impact on the colonists.
