The "rights of Englishmen" are the traditional rights of English subjects and later English-speaking subjects of theBritish Crown.
In the 18th century, some of thecolonists who objected to British rule in thethirteen British North American colonies that would become the first United States argued that their traditional[1] rights asEnglishmen were being violated. The colonists sought to retain the rights they or their ancestors had traditionally enjoyed in England, including the establishment of a local, representative government. Their demands were especially focused on issues of judicial fairness such as opposition to being transported to England for trial and the principle of no taxation without representation.[2] Belief in these rights subsequently became a widely accepted justification for theAmerican Revolution.[3][4]
In the tradition ofWhig history, JudgeWilliam Blackstone called them "The absolute rights of every Englishman". He described theFundamental Laws of England in his influentialCommentaries on the Laws of England (1765), in which he explained how they had been established slowly over centuries ofEnglish constitutional history.[5] They were certain basic rights that all subjects of theEnglish monarch were understood to be entitled to,[5] such as those expressed inMagna Carta since 1215, thePetition of Right in 1628, theHabeas Corpus Act 1679 and theBill of Rights 1689.[6]
In a legal case that came to be known asCalvin's Case, or theCase of the Postnati, theLaw Lords decided in 1608 thatScotsmen born afterKing James I unitedScotland and England (thepostnati) had all the rights of Englishmen. This decision would have a subsequent effect on the concept of the "rights of Englishmen" in British America.[7][8][9]
The American colonies had since the 17th century been fertile ground for liberalism within the center of European political discourse.[10] However, as the ratification of theDeclaration of Independence approached, the issue among the colonists of which particular rights were significant became divisive.George Mason, one of theFounding Fathers of the United States, stated that "We claim nothing but the liberty and privileges of Englishmen in the same degree, as if we had continued among our brethren in Great Britain."[4]
Owing to its inclusion in the standard legal treatises of the 19th century,[a]Calvin's Case was well known in the early judicial history of the United States.[8] Consideration of the case by theUnited States Supreme Court and by state courts transformed it into a rule regarding American citizenship and solidified the concept ofjus soli – the right by which nationality or citizenship can be recognised to any individual born in the territory of the related state – as the primary determining factor controlling the acquisition of citizenship by birth.[11]
The Supreme Court JusticeJoseph P. Bradley asserted that the "rights of Englishmen" were a foundation of American law in his dissenting opinion on theSlaughter-House Cases, the first Supreme Court interpretation of theFourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in 1873.[b]
The people of this country brought with them to its shores the rights of Englishmen, the rights which had been wrested from English sovereigns at various periods of the nation's history.... England has no written constitution, it is true, but it has an unwritten one, resting in the acknowledged, and frequently declared, privileges of Parliament and the people, to violate which in any material respect would produce a revolution in an hour. A violation of one of the fundamental principles of that constitution in the Colonies, namely, the principle that recognizes the property of the people as their own, and which, therefore, regards all taxes for the support of government as gifts of the people through their representatives, and regards taxation without representation as subversive of free government, was the origin of our own revolution.
It is true that the colonists had insisted that they were seeking "the rights of Englishmen", but insisting upon this in the face of rulers who declare that colonists do not have such rights is revolutionary, though the rights themselves might not be new.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)As long as the rights of Englishmen remained the goal, most Americans warmly supported the patriot leaders; when the rights of Americans and independence Great Britain were put forward, the colonists began to divide into hostile camps.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)[The American colonists' position depended] not onnatural law, but on traditional notions of the rights of Englishmen, the royal charters of the separate colonies and especially on 'long standingconstitutional custom'.
{{cite encyclopedia}}:Missing or empty|title= (help)CS1 maint: location (link)Articles related to the rights of Englishmen | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||||||||||||
