Skip to main content

Which British politician agreed with Sam Adams and the other revolutionaries regarding their grievances with the British Parliament's imposition of...

The politician you're thinking of is Edmund Burke. He was born in Ireland (it's important to remember that at this time Ireland was under British rule; Northern Ireland still is) and moved to London after he gave up on his law studies. He was brought up in a religiously mixed house. He was a practicing Anglican and his sister was a Roman Catholic. In most households at this time, this would have been a strong point of contention. But perhaps it informs the type of pragmatism that Burke brought to the British Parliament when he was elected in 1765. 

He knew firsthand what British rule looked like. Perhaps that's why he sided with Sam Adams and his compatriots as they petitioned King George III and the Parliament for redress of their grievances. Originally the American Colonies had no desire to be a separate country. They were, after all, loyal British subjects. However, as the Parliament demanded that the Colonists pay for, and perhaps not unreasonably so, the French and Indian War (what the British termed the Seven Years War), things turned sour. 

American colonists, particularly those who were well off, didn't like the idea of paying additional taxes for their general welfare. Burke saw that the Parliament was being inflexible when it came to the imposition of taxes or duties.

American colonists called for a seat in Parliament and Burke thought that more flexibility by Parliament would help maintain a positive relationship with the king's subjects across the Atlantic, but it was not to be. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.