The 27 grievances is a section from the United States Declaration of Independence. The Second Continental Congress's Committee of Five drafted the document listing their grievances with the actions and decisions of King George III with regard to the colonies in North America. The Second Continental Congress voted unanimously to adopt and issue the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
Historians have noted the similarities between John Locke's works and the context of the grievances. Historical precedents such as Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights of 1689 had established the principle that the King was not to interfere with the Rights of Englishmen held by the people. In the view of the American colonies, the King had opposed the very purpose of governance by opposing laws deemed necessary for the public good.
Grievance 1 "He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good."
"The Colonial Assemblies, from time to time, made enactments touching their commercial operations, the emission of a colonial currency, and concerning representatives in the imperial Parliament, but the assent of the sovereign to these laws was withheld. After the Stamp-Act excitements, Secretary Conway informed the Americans that the tumults should be overlooked, provided the Assemblies would make provision for full compensation for all public property which had been destroyed. In complying with this demand, the Assembly of Massachusetts stated it would be 'wholesome and necessary for the public good' to grant free pardon to all who had been engaged in the disturbances, and passed an act accordingly. It would have produced quiet and good feeling; but the royal assent was refused."
Self-governance was at the heart of the Founding Fathers' concerns, and each time George III refused to ratify Colonial legislation, he intensified that concern.Natural Rights And The Founding Fathers - The Virginians, Washington and Lee Law ReviewFederalist No. 39, paragraph 2
Grievance 2 "He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them."
This is an indictment of the King's appointed governors in the colonies, who had refused to endorse laws colonists viewed as conducive to the public good. The Massachusetts Assembly passed a law in 1770 for taxing Government officers in that colony, but the King ordered the governor to withhold his assent. Thus, the King violated the colonial charter and showed the little power of the colonies.
"Neglect" is one of two reasons mentioned by John Locke as a valid reason for a dissolved government.
Grievance 3 "He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only."
Chapter 19 of Two Treatises of Government notes that "when such a single person, or prince, sets up his own arbitrary will, in place of the laws, which are the will of the society, declared by the legislative, then the legislative is changed." Locke lists changing the legislature without the people's knowledge or consent as another situation that justifies reform of government.
Grievance 4 "He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, and also uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures."
On May 20, 1774, Parliament passed the Massachusetts Government Act, which nullified the Massachusetts Charter of 1691 and allowed governor Thomas Gage to dissolve the local provincial assembly and force them to meet in Salem instead of Boston.
Grievance 5 "He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people."
The Massachusetts Assembly issued a circular to other Assemblies in 1768 urging mutual co-operation in asserting the principle that Great Britain had no right to tax the colonists without their consent. The King then demanded that the Assembly rescind the resolutions expressed in the circular, and he ordered the governor to dissolve the Massachusetts Assembly immediately if they refused. Other assemblies were warned by the Government not to imitate Massachusetts, and the King dissolved any that refused to yield to their royally appointed governors. The North Carolina General Assembly and Virginia General Assembly were dissolved for denying the right of the King to tax the colonies or to extradite Americans from the colonies to stand trial. Several assemblies discussed forming a general Congress with delegates from all the colonies in 1774, and the King dissolved nearly all those that entertained the idea. The Virginia House of Burgesses had implemented five resolutions, however, attempted to rescind the fifth on the 31st of May, 1765. As the papers had already printed their implementation, Royal Governor Francis Fauquier dissolved the House for adopting the resolutions.Profiles in Colonial History
Grievance 6 "He has refused for a long time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and convulsions within."
The New York Restraining Act 1767 which suspended the Assembly's legislative authority.The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, Volume I John Dickinson discusses the suspension of New York's assembly in Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.Letter I
The Assembly of Massachusetts was dissolved in July 1768, and was not permitted to meet again until the last Wednesday of May 1769; even then, they found a military guard surrounding their meeting location with cannons pointed directly at it.
Grievance 7 "He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."
There had been a large influx of German immigrants immigrating to America, and the King wanted to discourage such immigration. The Government was concerned over the increasing power of the colonies and the widespread popularity of republican ideals among German immigrants. After the peace of 1763, few people settled west of the Alleghenies due to these restrictions, and immigration had almost ceased by the time of the revolution.
Grievance 8 "He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers."
Parliament deprived the people of Massachusetts the right to elect their judges in 1774. Instead, the King appointed all the colony's judges, and they were dependent on him for their salaries and subject to his directions—and those salaries came from taxes and duties on the colonists. The same act deprived the colonists of the benefit of trial by jury, and the "administration of justice" was obstructed. Other colonies expressed similar grievances concerning the courts of law.
Grievance 9 "He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries."
Judges and royally appointed governors did not depend upon the colonists for their income; they drew their salaries from the King, and the American colonists saw that this led their officers to sympathize with Parliament but not with the colonies. The Colonial assemblies protested against these measures, leading to the formation of the Committees of correspondence in 1774. History of New England: History of New England from the revolution of the seventeenth century to the revolution of the eighteenth, pp 457-458A Distinct Judicial Power: The Origins of an Independent Judiciary, 1606-1787, p. 84
When Chief Justice Oliver declared it to be his intention to receive his salary from the crown,Independence of the Judges, 1773–1774 the Assembly proceeded to impeach him and petitioned Governor Thomas Hutchinson for his removal. The governor refused compliance and great irritation ensued.Tea Party to Independence: The Third Phase of the American Revolution, 1773-1776
Grievance 10 "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."
After the passage of the Stamp Act, stamp distributors were appointed in every considerable town. In 1766 and 1767, acts for the collection of duties created "swarms of officers", all of whom received high salaries; and when in 1768, admiralty and vice-admiralty courts were established on a new basis, an increase in the number of officers was made. The high salaries and extensive perquisites of all of these were paid with the people's money, and thus "swarms of officers, ate out their substance."
Grievance 11 "He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures."
In 1763, Britain and France signed the Treaty of Paris to end the Seven Years' War. Parliament realized they needed to keep a permanent army in the American colonies in order both to keep the French from reasserting their control of their former territories and to prevent open warfare between the colonists and the Native Americans along the frontier. Although the colonists initially welcomed the protection provided by the soldiers by the 1760s and early 1770s they had increasingly come to see the army as a tool for Parliament to enforce various revenue acts—e.g. the Stamp Act and Townshend Acts—that many colonists viewed as illegitimate. The last straw came in 1774 when Parliament passed the Quartering Act in response to the Boston Tea Party. This act allowed army officers to appropriate private property to quarter their troops without the consent of the property's owners. When General Thomas Gage occupied Boston in September 1774, he relied on this act to quarter his troops. It was Gage's military occupation of Boston that led the Second Continental Congress to include this grievance in the Declaration of Independence.
Grievance 12 "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power."
Upon his arrival at Boston in 1774, Thomas Gage – commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America – assumed control of the civil government as royal governor of Massachusetts. Both offices were held by royal appointment and without the approval of the people or the provincial government of Massachusetts. This was done according to the authority of Parliament (see: Massachusetts Government Act) in which the colonies were not represented. The purpose of this arrangement was to enforce the payment of customs, quell insurrection and resistance, and execute punitive measures. The Continental Congress considered that the police power of the state had been removed from accountability to the people of the province or their local, duly-elected leaders and could thus be used despotically to further the unjust policies imposed by the crown.
Grievance 13 "He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:"