Conclusion

Abstract

The Declaration of Independence accused King George III of ‘having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States’. It went on to list a series of charges against him to substantiate this claim ‘to a candid world’. If they are read candidly, however, few seem to demonstrate that he was in fact a tyrant. The first accused him of vetoing legislation passed by colonial Assemblies. Yet the Crown retained the theoretical right to veto bills passed by both Houses of Parliament as well as by legislatures in the colonies. The fact that none had been vetoed in Britain since 1708 was a constitutional convention, not a relinquishing of the power. George was also charged with dissolving Assemblies, yet the prerogative of dissolution of all legislative bodies, including Parliament, whenever it suited the King, was still possessed by the Crown, and exercised on both sides of the Atlantic. The fact that most Parliaments were allowed to run the full course prescribed in the Septennial Act was another convention, one which was occasionally flouted. Thus, Lord North had got the King to dissolve Parliament in 1774, six months before it was required, in order to cash in at the polls on the popularity in Britain of his Coercive Acts. George was criticised for appointing judges ‘dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices’.