But for King and Tea

Equality at the legislative level, not individual rights, was the cause of the American Revolution. What the colonists sought is not unlike the Commonwealth of today and would have changed history. On this Fourth of July, American politicians and commentators will assert the war of independence was motivated by a love of individual liberty. Nothing could be further from the truth. The British empire in the 1770s was among the most liberal realms that had ever existed. The American war of independence was fought over collective power, not personal freedom. What was at stake was whether the British empire would be a unitary realm governed by the London parliament, or a federal empire with many parliaments and legislatures united only by a single monarch.

It was the political power of American colonial legislatures, not the rights of British subjects in America as individuals, that was at stake in the controversies about taxes on tea and other items. Alexander Hamilton remarked that it was absurd "to affirm, that we are quarrelling for the trifling sum of three pence a pound on tea, when it is evidently the principle against which we contend." The "principle" was the claim of the colonists that, while they could be taxed by their own legislatures, with the concurrence of the colonial governors, who were representatives of the king, they could not be taxed by the London parliament. As Theodore Draper writes in his study A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution (1996), "In its political form, the American Revolution was brought about by British actions which attempted to reduce the power of assemblies and eventually led them to bid for all power."

The American colonists used several arguments to deny the legitimacy of taxation by London. The fact Americans could not send representatives to London violated the cherished British principle of "no taxation without representation." In addition, the colonists claimed they had never been subject to the jurisdiction of the London parliament. This was a bit of a stretch, given instances in which London had legislated on behalf of the colonies. Even so, the Americans had the stronger side in the constitutional argument. In his Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), Thomas Jefferson asserted that the original colonists, having left Britain, continued "their union with her by submitting themselves to the same common Sovereign, who was thereby made the central link connecting the several parts of the Empire thus newly multiplied." The claim that the British empire was linked chiefly or only by the person of the king was supported by history. All of the colonial governors were appointed by the king alone, without the approval of Westminster. And all of the colonies had elected assemblies with unconditional control over money bills. On the basis of history, the Americans could make a powerful case that the London parliament's attempts to tax the colonies were usurping the long-accepted powers of the individual colonial legislatures.

It is all too often forgotten that in 1774-75 the colonial leaders sought equality within the British empire, not separation from it. Indeed, in the Declaration of Rights adopted by the First Continental Congress in 1774, the colonists' argument was framed in terms of their right to participate in "English liberty" as members of the British empire: "We have not raised armies with ambitious designs of separating from Great Britain." The Congress even declared that it was willing to "cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of the British Parliament, as are bona fide restrained to the regulation of our external commerce . . ." Even after the battles of Lexington and Concord, many colonists still hoped a compromise between London and the colonies could be worked out. Only in 1776, having given up hope, did they opt for independence, justified by reference to universal natural rights rather than traditional English liberties. The colonists no longer sought a separate and equal station within the British empire; now they sought to assume a "separate and equal station" among "the Powers of the earth."

The American theory of the federal empire is the reason why the Declaration of Independence denounces the king (who was acknowledged to have authority over the colonies) rather than the London parliament (which the colonists claimed never had any jurisdiction in America). In a sentence in Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence that was cut by Congress, Jefferson explicitly summarized the federal empire theory: "We have reminded them [our British brethren] . . . that in constituting indeed our several forms of government, we had adopted one common king; thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league and amity with them; but that submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution."

What the American colonists were proposing, then, was something like the British Commonwealth of today, in which the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are self-governing countries, each with its own legislature, that share a single monarch as head of state. If the British had agreed to such an arrangement in the late 18th century, then the rupture between Britain and what became the United States of America might not have occurred.

Britain would have been stronger and safer in the 19th and 20^th centuries, if the basis of its world power had been the kindred population and resources of North America, rather than British rule over subject nations in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Instead of being rescued from continental tyrannies at the last moment by reluctant U.S. governments, Britain might have been able to mobilize North American resources against German and Russian threats long in advance of a dire crisis like those of 1914 and 1939.

What is more, the civil liberties of some North Americans might have been protected better by the Crown than by the United States. The Crown would have been more likely to protect the Indians against rapacious white settlers. And American slavery might have been eliminated peacefully, as part of an empire-wide abolition of the practice, rather than as the result of a catastrophic civil war. Between a third and fifth of the American colonists opposed independence; had imperial federalism been adopted, the persecution and exile of the Loyalists (many of whom became founders of Canada) need never have taken place.

In hindsight, then, the federal empire or commonwealth the American colonists sought before 1776 looks to have been a very good idea indeed. A case can be made that a federal empire such as the British Commonwealth, combined, perhaps, with separate legislatures for Scotland, Wales and Ireland, would have been a small price to pay for the continued political association of Britain and Anglophone North America. Unfortunately, the doctrine of the supremacy of the London parliament made the break-up of the British Empire inevitable.

Even if the British were mistaken to reject imperial federalism in the 1770s, though, they had legitimate concerns about where such a principle might lead. For example, George III feared that if the colonies should succeed, "the West Indies must follow them.

Ireland would soon follow the same plan and be a separate State, then this Island would be reduced to itself, and soon would be a poor Island indeed . . ." The king's fear that American independence might trigger a chain reaction leading to the disintegration of the United Kingdom itself was not unreasonable. Exactly such a fate befell the former Soviet Union, which disintegrated into smaller states following the loss of its Eastern European empire. Indeed, British politics today is dominated by the question of separate legislatures for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom might yet turn into a federal state, or it might break up into English, Scottish and Welsh nation-states.

Ordinary Englishmen also had good reason to fear the consequences of imperial federalism. For one thing, the growth of the American colonies in population and wealth would have threatened to make North America the centre of gravity of the British empire by the middle of the 19th century. In 1776, Adam Smith observed that the Anglo-Americans were "contriving a new form of government for an extensive empire, which, they flatter themselves, will become, and which, indeed, seems very likely to become, one of the greatest and most formidable that ever was in the world." The downside of this, for the English, was the prospect that the British Isles would become minor provinces of a superpower centred on the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. (Anti-American Englishmen might assert that this has happened anyway!)

Nor could 18th-century Britons contemplate the possibility of a king ruling many separate-but-equal realms without a degree of fear. English history contained many examples of kings who brought in foreign subjects or mercenaries -- Scots, Irish, Danes -- to prop up their rule. If George III, the Hanoverian king, could use Hessian soldiers from his German domains to suppress his rebellious American subjects, what would prevent the monarch of a federal British empire from using Virginian and Pennsylvanian soldiers to crush dissent in England itself?

By the time the modern British Commmonwealth formed, such a threat no longer existed. In the course of the 19th century, the British monarch became a more or less purely ceremonial figurehead. Nobody today fears that Queen Elizabeth II will send Canadian and Australian troops to arrest Tony Blair, the British prime minister, and dismiss parliament. In the 18th century, though, the subjection of the British king to parliament was still far from established. Making the monarch the king of many lesser parliaments might have made it easier for him to escape from the constraints of any parliament.

The positions of both sides in the war between America and Britain, then, made sense. Perhaps at the time there was no way to avoid a divorce. What about a remarriage? The 20th century saw first a rapprochement and then a partnership between the United States and Britain -- a partnership that is as strong as ever, to judge, for example, by Anglo-American military co-operation against Iraq against the opposition of other American allies. A minority on both sides of the Atlantic remains enthusiastic about some sort of union of what Winston Churchill called "the English-speaking peoples."

In the near future, such a reunion seems unlikely. Britain is preoccupied with redefining its own identity and finding a place in the European Union. Canada is in the throes of an endless conflict between its English- and French-speakers. And Australia may sever its British connection, replacing the Queen with a republican head of state. Perhaps the monarchy -- which the American colonists hoped would be the ligament uniting the empire -- has to go, before there can be a loose English-speaking association of American, Anglophone Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and -- who knows? -- English, Welsh and Scots republics.

If there is a lesson to be drawn from the history of them British-American rupture, it is that governments and constitutions are means, not ends in themselves. The importance of compromise and flexibility in great questions of national and international fate was pointed out at the time of the American war of independence by Edmund Burke, a member of the London parliament who was sympathetic to the American colonies: "Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.