ABSTRACT
Common Sense exploded amidst an already volatile debate about colonial rights, imperial arbitrariness, and the possibility of resistance to British rule. American resentment had been instigated primarily by the passage of stamp duties on legal and other documents in 1765, which brought rioting and boycotts of British goods. In the late 1760s protest escalated in reaction to attempts to curtail the powers of colonial assemblies and to increase colonial revenues. The Wilkes case, as we have seen, fuelled unrest. British policy towards Ireland and India also seemed to some to betray the designs of ministerial tyranny. The failure of petitioning increased disappointments and eroded affections. More widely discussed as early as 1770–1 was armed resistance, and the view that colonial government was dissolving and might better be replaced by native rule. Independence was broached, though not widely supported, by 1772, the Dutch model being occasionally suggested. By 1774 the monarch, but a few years earlier the focus of hopes for respite from ministerial intrigue, had himself become a potent symbol of despotism. At Lexington and Concord in mid-1775 revolt finally became war. 1
