Concept thread · Governance
free elections
The principle that the choosing of representatives to the legislature must be free from royal or executive interference, and that the legislature must be convened frequently.
The thread
- 1689 · codifies · codified into lawThe Bill declares as fundamental law that election of members of Parliament ought to be free, fixing the principle of free elections.
- 1689 · codifies · codified into lawThe requirement that Parliaments be held frequently secures the free-elections principle by guaranteeing the legislature is regularly convened.
- 1776 · rebutsnuancedDissolving assemblies, Lind answers, is a power always held inherent in the crown, and it was used only against assemblies bent on encroaching upon the rights of Parliament.⚖ Lind meets this grievance head-on — "This charge amounts to nothing," because dissolving assemblies is "a power, which has always been considered as inherent in the crown" — and he flatly denies the Declaration's motive, recasting what it calls "invasions on the rights of the people" as "acts done in defence of the just rights of the Parliament and people of Great Britain." But notice that his own catalog of causes is wider than defending Parliament: Virginia was dissolved "for practices little short of treason," another Massachusetts assembly for "taking on itself the whole power of Governor, Council, and Assemblies," and only the impeachment episode is framed as "the maintaining of the rights of the British Parliament." So this is a genuine point-by-point answer to the charge; just don't let the summary flatten Lind's varied justifications into a single cause.
- 1776 · grievesnuancedAssemblies that opposed the Crown were simply dissolved — the elected house made to sit at the King's pleasure, the abuse the old demand for free and frequent legislatures was meant to bar.⚖ The quoted words charge the King with punishing assemblies for their votes — dissolving them "for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people" — not with rigging elections or failing to summon them; dissolution itself was a lawful royal power the 1689 demands for free election and frequent Parliaments never took away, as Lind's rebuttal was quick to point out. The grievance still reaches the thread, but sideways: a house that can be dismissed whenever it crosses the Crown makes the voters' free choice an empty exercise. The direct blow to frequent legislatures comes only in the Declaration's next charge, that the King "refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected."
- 1776 · rebutsupheldThe one royal dissolution he recalls answered a Massachusetts circular letter inviting the colonies into combination against the supreme authority — to Hutchinson the ordinary self-preservation of any government, not an invasion of rights.⚖ Hutchinson does not deny the dissolutions — he grants they happened "in all the Colonies, in former as well as later times" — but he answers the charge by re-describing the one dissolution "by special order from the King": the 1768 Massachusetts house had invited the other colonies into combination, and "No Government can long subsist, which admits of combinations of the subordinate powers against the supreme." The quoted line looks like a freestanding maxim, yet in the paragraph it is the hinge of his reply — the very next sentence begins "This proceeding was therefore, justly deemed highly unwarrantable," recasting the Declaration's "invasions on the rights of the people" as "the regular use of the prerogative in suppressing a begun Revolt." So the passage answers the grievance not by disputing the fact but by disputing what the fact means.
Related threads
Threads argued alongside this one, or that answer it.
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