Whatever deficiencies the leaders of the American Revolution may have had, reticence, fortunately, was not one of them.
Bernard BailynThe primary function of a constitution was to mark out the boundaries of governmental powers-hence in England, where there was no constitution , there were no limits (save for the effect of trail by jury) to what the legislature might do.
Bernard BailynThe fact that the ministerial conspiracy against liberty had risen from corruption was of the utmost importance to the colonists.
Bernard BailynThe ideas that the colonists put forward, rather than creating a new condition of fact, expressed one that has long existed; they articulated and in so doing generalized, systematized, gave moral sanction to what had emerged haphazardly, incompletely and insensibly, from the chaotic factionalism of colonial politics.
Bernard Bailyn