[Bollan] A Succinct View of the Origin of Our Colonies

William Bollan’s The Mutual Interest of Great Britain and the American Colonies Consider’d (1765) opposed the taxation measures of 1764 and 1765 on practical grounds but said little about ideological or constitutional principles. By contrast, A Succinct View of the Origin of our Colonies addresses these issues head on. Bollan notes how Spain’s ‘political errors; through prejudice, with its consequents injustice and cruelty’ included war against rather than incorporation of Amerindians and had led to the loss of Portugal and the Netherlands. He outlines broad foundations on which he believed the imperial constitution rested. There is therefore no room in Bollan’s argument for the kind of 'diffused sovereignty' that colonists increasingly argued for in the wake of the Declaratory Act that claimed Parliament’s rights to legislate for the colonies ‘in all cases whatsoever’.