Skip to main content

What do the parts about King George in the Constitution mean?

King George III is not mentioned in the Constitution. The Constitution of the United States was written in 1787, more than a decade after the colonies had declared their independence from Great Britain, and four years after independence was formally established by the Treaty of Paris. So King George was not relevant to the Constitution, though its prohibitions against religious tests, noble titles, writs of assistance, and other clauses certainly were a tacit reaction to the actions of the King and Parliament. 


It is likely, however, that this question is referring to the Declaration of Independence, which levies many accusations against King George. These accusations ranged from claims that he refused to approve laws that were good for the colonies, to his approval of unjust taxes, to allegations that he urged enslaved people and Native Americans to rise up against the Americans during the early days of the Revolution. Of course, most of these actions, to the extent they actually occurred, were not really undertaken by the King. In fact, it was Parliament that levied taxes, and the king's ministers who formulated imperial policy. For many years, the colonists had actually protested to the King, who they claimed was the protector of their liberties against the corrupt members of Parliament. By levying these accusations against the King, then, they sent a clear message that they were striking out on their own. They were moving from claiming rights as British subjects to rejecting British rule outright.

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.