“A lust for domination is more or less natural to all parties,” one colonist wrote.1 Men will seek power, many colonists believed, because they are ambitious, greedy, and easily corrupted. John Adams denounced the “luxury, effeminacy, and venality” of English politics; Patrick Henry spoke scathingly of the “corrupt House of Commons”; and Alexander Hamilton described England as “an old, wrinkled, withered, worn-out hag.”2 This was in part flamboyant rhetoric designed to whip up enthusiasm for the conflict, but it was also deeply revealing of the colonial mindset. Their belief that English politicians—and, by implication, most politicians in general—tended to be corrupt was the colonists’ explanation of why the English constitution was not an adequate guarantee of the liberty of the citizens. This opinion was to persist and, as we shall see, profoundly affect the way the Americans went about designing their own governments.

The liberties the colonists fought to protect were, they thought, widely understood. They were based not on the generosity of the king or the language of statutes but on a “higher law” embodying “natural rights” that were ordained by God, discoverable in nature and history, and essential to human progress. These rights, John Dickinson

wrote, are “born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken away from us by any human power.”3 There was general agreement that the essential rights included life, liberty, and property long before Thomas Jefferson wrote them into the Declaration of Independence. (Jefferson changed “property” to “the pursuit of happiness,” but almost everybody else went on talking about property.)
This emphasis on property did not mean the American Revolution was thought up by the rich and wellborn to protect their interests or that there was a struggle between property owners and the propertyless. In late-18th-century America, most people (except the black slaves) had property of some kind. The overwhelming majority of citizens were self-employed—as farmers or artisans—and rather few people benefited financially by gaining independence from England. Taxes were higher during and after the war than they were before it, trade was disrupted by the conflict, and debts mounted perilously as various expedients were invented to pay for the struggle. There were, of course, war profiteers and those who tried to manipulate the currency to their own advantage, but most Americans at the time of the war saw the conflict in terms of political rather than economic issues. It was a war of ideology.
We all recognize the glowing language with which Jefferson set out the case for independence in the second paragraph of the Declaration:



wrote, are “born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken away from us by any human power.”3 There was general agreement that the essential rights included life, liberty, and property long before Thomas Jefferson wrote them into the Declaration of Independence. (Jefferson changed “property” to “the pursuit of happiness,” but almost everybody else went on talking about property.)
This emphasis on property did not mean the American Revolution was thought up by the rich and wellborn to protect their interests or that there was a struggle between property owners and the propertyless. In late-18th-century America, most people (except the black slaves) had property of some kind. The overwhelming majority of citizens were self-employed—as farmers or artisans—and rather few people benefited financially by gaining independence from England. Taxes were higher during and after the war than they were before it, trade was disrupted by the conflict, and debts mounted perilously as various expedients were invented to pay for the struggle. There were, of course, war profiteers and those who tried to manipulate the currency to their own advantage, but most Americans at the time of the war saw the conflict in terms of political rather than economic issues. It was a war of ideology.
We all recognize the glowing language with which Jefferson set out the case for independence in the second paragraph of the Declaration: