Ever since Samuel Johnson's icy comment of 1775 - 'How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?' - British observers have felt a little sour about the American Revolution. For Tories like Johnson, the colonists were ungrateful wretches who had squandered the precious gift of British liberty. Worse, they had the temerity to crow about it, arguing that the American Revolution had purified their political inheritance. But British accusations of American hypocrisy foundered on the unsettling realisation that the colonists were justified in their complaints. From Edmund Burke to Richard Price, observers across the political spectrum struggled to see much evidence of British liberty in the crass mismanagement that led to the Revolution. Some even followed Jefferson, who in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence blamed Britain (and its controlling interest in the slave trade) for the introduction and persistence of slavery in America.

LRB 6 April 2006 | PDF Download