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imagesKing George’s message to American Subjects: The 13 Colonies of the United States must remain part of the UK

7 Jun 1775 12:51

THE King warns that huge battles lie ahead for the Empire.

King George said the case for keeping The 13 Colonies of the United States in the United Kingdom is “unquestionable”.

He also pledged he will fight “every step of the way” to keep the country together.

With people in The 13 Colonies of the United States to declare for independence soon, His Majesty used his speech to make the case for the Union.

He defended the Government’s controversial tea tax reforms, telling Peers they should be “proud that we’re the party making the bold case on wealth redistribution from the poor in the colonies to Westminster. “How can the people of Boston not pay tax if they are to enjoy the pomp and circumstance and hundreds of years of State grandeur found in Court Circulars? Do they want to read about it but not pay their fair share?”

The King said: “There is no turning back with tea taxation. The Bostonians need to wake up and smell the coffee!

“But the argument about the future has to be won where it really counts: in the heart as well as in the head. Let’s show that our case stacks up on paper. But let’s also make sure it resonates with people too. Win in the head, and win in the heart. The case for the Union is not just about the cold, hard facts. It goes much, much deeper than that. This is about the future of our island. The next chapter in our story. And if we don’t win the hearts and minds of the American subjects, we shall declare war on them to help them see the error of their ways!

“There is simply no challenge we face today where breaking up Britain is the right answer. “The 13 Colonies of the United States should remain part of a dynamic, enterprising, prosperous, invading, compassionate Britain.

“”We should be pulling together, not pulling apart.” he added.

His Majesty had begun his address by telling Lords: “We’ve got some huge battles coming up, not just for our party but for our country; for The 13 Colonies, for Britain.”

With the independence declaration due on May 15, 1776 next year, he said the focus in 1776 would be on “saving our United Kingdom”.

To succeed, he said, “Must meet vital challenges including cutting the UK’s war debts and reforming the welfare system of two crusts of bread and some gruel per 12 hour shift in the work house.

“It is only be meeting these challenges that we will win the fight for Britain’s future.”

He attacked John Adam’s proposal for an independent 13 Colonies of the United States to keep using the pound in a so-called sterling zone with the rest of the UK. “How can their currency survive? I’ll make sure they move to some petty currency like the ‘dollar’?”

His Majesty highlighted the economic problems in Virginia and questioned whether Thomas Jefferson has seen what has happened in Europe over the past years. “Labour costs may be low at the moment but emancipation could destroy their economy.

The King insisted: “You can’t make a currency work without a political union. Look at Europe? The French are in revolution. Famine stalks the aristocracy and some have even had to give up personal dressmakers and masked balls.”

He went on: “If The 13 Colonies of the United States left the UK, the size of its banking sector could create problems.

“The banks would be 12 times the size of The 13 Colonies of the United States’s economy.

“If there’s one thing we’ve learnt from the financial crisis: you can’t have banks that are too big to fail. The strength of the American banking system is, in truth, it’s weakness. The vast amount of tobacco, cotton and sugar made – would they be able to transport it if we blockaded? Will they know how to invest their massive profits in war as we do? I can see them fritter this away on city-building, road-building and harbour building.”

“The UK’s history has always been one of shared endeavour with different countries, proud in our individual identities but working together for a common good after we have conquered them in war.”

“We saw it when our soldiers fought together under one flag on the fields of Blenheim. We saw it when our doctors came together to use leeches in only the best drawing rooms. We saw it in the scientific breakthroughs that we made together: from the water closet to copper-bottomed boats. And we saw it last summer as soldiers from around Britain, no matter where they were from, draped themselves in one flag to suppress the poor during the riots looking for the vote for the incorrigible.”

“This is why the Government is taking tough action on the economy and the colonies.

“It hasn’t been easy, and it certainly hasn’t always been popular. But our plan is working. The taxation of tea will bring so many benefits that I cannot begin to list them. Suffice to say, the non-payment of tax will be chased through the courts we will set up.”

“Finally, if you don’t pay fealty and tax. We will invade, I mean, really invade. Hit those small towns and villages like New York and well, some of the others really hard. Face it America, George Washington is only a part-time Colonel and tobacco grower, how can anyone take him seriously?”

Long live my Empire, and me

 

 

 

George

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  1. Paul Cochrane says:

    The writer is a genius………LOL!

  2. paul cochrane says:

    Cheers!

    Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 20:32:10 +0000 To: [email protected]

  3. Jen says:

    Excellent, thanks for sharing.

  4. Gavin says:

    Is this for real?

    1. Paul Cochrane says:

      Dave – it’s a spoof of Cameron’s speech yesterday translated back a few centuries. Relax on the detail.

      “With people in the 13 colonies of the United States to declare for independence soon” is also un-histoical(sic) nonsense.” We know that already!

      I think the reference to the King having no direct part is also misleading as during and after the war, according to Trevelyan (1912) he was determined to destroy coastal trade and use Native Americans to terrorise civilians in settlements. This “would keep the rebels harassed, anxious, and poor, until the day when, by a natural and inevitable process, discontent and disappointment were converted into penitence and remorse” and they would beg to return to his authority.” A very common tactic of the Empire, the use of terror by insurgents.

      As Dave (Coull and Cameron!) knows, his reference to “The Westminster government actually proposed to bring CHEAPER tea into America. They let the East India Company bring into Boston harbour three shiploads of tea exempt of tax” is also misleading as the British Government had given the East India Company a monopoly of tea that was taxed at 25%. This meant that smuggling was, quite rightly, rife and the imposition of taxation without the representation of elected and accountable men caused rebellion. By lowering the tax on tea, this was a concession to the monopoly, not the natives. Export trade also was regulated to enrich England and this too was a source of disquiet.

      In the 1760s, the direct taxation without representation of the colonies for the purposes of raising revenue for Westminster sowed the seeds of the independence movement. Thank God Westminster has never made the mistake of imposing a tax on Scotland that did not apply elsewhere or else we could be seeing an independence movement in Scotland.

      Have a nice day!

  5. Caadfael says:

    “Then they fight you and you win!” Mohandas K Ghandi.

  6. Bill Craig says:

    Excellent satire, unlike the recent effort from a certain Susan C. I’ve passed it on to some undecided voters!

  7. Dave Coull says:

    The King actually played very little direct part in things back then, except as a symbol. The Americans’ dispute was with the Westminster parliament, and with the prime minister and government who answered to that parliament. The extent of dissent in that parliament was far greater than the extent of dissent in today’s Westminster. Opposition MPs regularly held wild parties to celebrate British army defeats or setbacks; the leader of the Opposition (who later became prime minister) deliberately wore, to parliament, an outfit in the colours of George Washington’s army, to indicate where his sympathies lay. It is impossible to imagine such open “disloyalty” happening today.

    “With people in the 13 colonies of the United States to declare for independence soon” is also un-histoical nonsense. The date of this is given as 7th June 1775. On that date, there was no such thing as “the United States”, and there was no certainty that there ever would be. There were 13 colonies, some of which had grievances against each other as big as those they had against Westminster. Maryland and Pennsylvania had fought a war with each other, and Maryland had hung quite a few “traitors” as Pennsylvanian spies. There was no certainty that the compromise plan suggested by New York and New Jersey, for an American Parliament within the British Empire, would not be agreed. There was no certainty that slave-owning colonies such as those represented by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, etc, could agree on any kind of permanent Union with northern states such as Massachusetts represented by John Adams. More than a year after this, Jefferson did draft a Declaration of Independence, but it had to be altered to take account of objections from some of the slave-owning colonies. By the time the toned-down draft version was ready for signature, everybody had gone home, in some cases many hundreds of miles away. (The congress wasn’t a parliament, it was just a meeting.) Signatures were gradually added over the coming months and years. The final signature on the Declaration of Independence was made two and a half years after the 4th of July 1776.

  8. Dave Coull says:

    The reference to the “tea tax reforms” reveals that the author knows about as much about American history as the Tea Party do, which is, not much at all. The Westminster government actually proposed to bring CHEAPER tea into America. They let the East India Company bring into Boston harbour three shiploads of tea exempt of tax. But this was very bad news for a significant number of Boston merchants whose livelihoods depended on smuggling tea to avoid the tax. If tea could be brought in legally cheaper than they could smuggle it, that would destroy their livelihoods. Hence the Boston Tea Party.

  9. Dave Coull says:

    The reference to “invading” New York is particularly silly. New York was notoriously loyalist. It provided large numbers of Americans to fight in loyalist regiments and militias. When fighting in the American War of Independence ended, and a truce was agreed, while peace talks took place in Paris, the city of New York remained in British hands. Those negotiations in Paris took almost three years, and the city of New York remained in British hands throughout the negotiations. When it became clear that New York would be handed over to the USA, many thousands of refugees began leaving. Hundreds of refugee ships sailed for Canada. There were so many refugees, Canada was changed from a predominantly French-speaking country to a predominantly English-speaking country. The British refused to hand over to the Americans the thousands of escaped slaves in New York. George Washington was furious that the black overseer in charge of the slaves on his own plantation, Joshua Washington, together with his wife, got on the last refugee ship sailing out of New York.

  10. Dave Coull says:

    Scotland isn’t the USA. Our history is different from theirs. We are not a collection of feuding colonies, and we’re not going to adopt a constitution which glosses over slavery and leads inevitably to civil war.

    1. Paul Cochrane says:

      Dave – it’s a spoof of Cameron’s speech yesterday translated back a few centuries. Relax on the detail.

      “With people in the 13 colonies of the United States to declare for independence soon” is also un-histoical(sic) nonsense.” We know that already!

      I think the reference to the King having no direct part is also misleading as during and after the war, according to Trevelyan (1912) he was determined to destroy coastal trade and use Native Americans to terrorise civilians in settlements. This “would keep the rebels harassed, anxious, and poor, until the day when, by a natural and inevitable process, discontent and disappointment were converted into penitence and remorse” and they would beg to return to his authority.” A very common tactic of the Empire, the use of terror by insurgents.

      As Dave (Coull and Cameron!) knows, his reference to “The Westminster government actually proposed to bring CHEAPER tea into America. They let the East India Company bring into Boston harbour three shiploads of tea exempt of tax” is also misleading as the British Government had given the East India Company a monopoly of tea that was taxed at 25%. This meant that smuggling was, quite rightly, rife and the imposition of taxation without the representation of elected and accountable men caused rebellion. By lowering the tax on tea, this was a concession to the monopoly, not the natives. Export trade also was regulated to enrich England and this too was a source of disquiet.

      In the 1760s, the direct taxation without representation of the colonies for the purposes of raising revenue for Westminster sowed the seeds of the independence movement. Thank God Westminster has never made the mistake of imposing a tax on Scotland that did not apply elsewhere or else we could be seeing an independence movement in Scotland.

      Have a nice day!

  11. Wouldn’t it be nice to see some politicians at Westminster disagreeing about a few things. Fat chance of that, as they are inter-changeable nowadays, and as for the spoof, doesn’t that proove they never change over the centuries? Westminster still has the same mind-set today as they had at the Act of Union. Cameron is the latest in the long line of robotic Prime Ministers that regurgitate the same old same old.

  12. Dave Coull says:

    On the children’s television channel CBBC, there is a very funny series of programmes called “Horrible Histories”. I have sometimes watched it with my grandchildren, and enjoyed doing so. But, as well as being a good laugh, one thing I noticed about the “Horrible Histories” that I saw was that, although they were presented in a funny way, they were all based on fact. The Horrible Histories I saw presented unusual, and often quite surprising, facts from history. They obviously have actual historians, as well as comedians, singers, dancers, and cartoonists, working on the programme.

    This attempt on Bella Caledonia doesn’t meet the standards of those Horrible Histories I’ve seem. It isn’t based on history, and it isn’t very funny.

  13. Dave Coull says:

    “the direct taxation without representation of the colonies for the purposes of raising revenue for Westminster sowed the seeds of the independence movement” – that was the propaganda at the time, which has been repeated ever since by folk who have not bothered to study history. The Boston Tea Party did not arise because of taxation, but because of the import of three shiploads of tea EXEMPT from taxation. As for the Southern colonies, they couldn’t have cared less about the Northern concerns re taxation. Their concern was that Lord Mansfield’s ruling that slavery had no basis in the law of England could, sooner or later, be extended throughout the Empire. As, indeed, well before the American Civil War, and the USA’s subsequent abolition of slavery, it was. And the proposal by New York and New Jersey for an American Parliament within the Empire (with tax raising powers) would have met the concern about “no taxation without representation”. But, by that time, the South wanted a complete break with the Empire, in order to preserve slavery.

  14. Dave Coull says:

    “During and after the war, according to Trevelyan (1912)”

    1912 is history. No historian nowadays would cite anybody from over a hundred years ago without acknowledging the context in which they wrote, and the light which has been shed on events by research undertaken since then.

    It suited the colonists to pretend their war was with the King. That’s why their Declaration says things like HE did this, and HE did that. But of course they knew perfectly well that it was the British government which did these things, When the war ended badly for that government, it fell. The Opposition which had celebrated British defeats became the Government, and the guy who wore George Washington’s colours in the House of Commons became Prime Minister.

  15. Dave Coull says:

    “it’s a spoof of Cameron’s speech yesterday” – I know that. But it is ALSO something which repeats a load of nonsense regarding American history. I left school and started full time work before my 15th birthday in June 1956, fifty seven years ago. But although I left school and started work when I was 14, all of my life I have studied history, as a hobby, just because I’m interested in history. And all of my life I have objected when folk spread things about history which I know to be un-historical. And I always will.

  16. Dave Coull says:

    In the period we are talking about, Americans drank tea. It was only later that tea became unpopular, and it was only later that drinking coffee instead came to be seen as a patriotic thing to do. Yes, lowering the tax on tea was a concession to a monopoly multi-national corporation, not to the Americans. Nevertheless, the effect of that concession to a multi-national corporation was that three shiploads of very cheap tea , with a lot more to come, were imported into Boston. If you were really poor in the USA, you would probably welcome the prospect of very cheap tea. The folk who didn’t were some wealthy Boston merchants and their employees. The importation of tea which was cheaper than the tea they smuggled in was a threat to their livelihoods. So don’t give that “it was about taxation” rubbish.

  17. Paul Cochrane says:

    So you ….
    “Yes, lowering the tax on tea was a concession to a monopoly multi-national corporation, not to the Americans.”
    …agree with me while….
    “So don’t give that “it was about taxation” rubbish.”
    …disagreeing with me….! Nice stance Dave.

    Being an expert on American/British Imperial history, I find it strange that you do not recognise the impact that the Stamp Act, the Townsend Acts and Intolerable Acts had on the yearning for political freedom from the coercion and oppression that the British State has always defaulted to.

    Finally, “The King actually played very little direct part in things back then, except as a symbol.”
    So it suited the British Parliament yo use the King as a symbol of Imperial power but…
    “It suited the colonists to pretend their war was with the King. That’s why their Declaration says things like HE did this, and HE did that. But of course they knew perfectly well that it was the British government which did these things.”
    …those pesky colonists shouldn’t?

    Chill out Dave – it’s only a wee joke that seems to have raised a smile in a few people.

    Have a nice Sunday.

    1. Dave Coull says:

      Yes, it’s a mistake to think the “American Revolution” was all about taxes. Taxes were a major concern for folk in Boston and other parts of New England. They were of far less importance to folk in the South. In any case, the compromise solution, proposed by two of the “Middle Colonies” (New York and New Jersey) and gaining support from another of the middle colonies, Pennsylvania, could have solved the tax problem without a complete break. The British government had made reluctant concessions to the colonists in the past, and would have, however reluctantly, accepted the compromise of an American Parliament within the Empire. The Americans could still have been paying taxes for the maintenance of British troops to guard against attacks by the French and their red injun allies, but they would have been paying taxes decided by their American representatives. The reason that didn’t happen is because Southern slave-owners such as Washington, Jefferson, Henry, etc, had come to the conclusion that only a complete break with the Empire could ensure the long-term maintenance of their ownership of black slaves.

    2. Dave Coull says:

      Re “those pesky colonists shouldn’t” use the king as a symbol – it’s not a question of what folk in history “should” or “shouldn’t” have done. It’s a question of recognising blatant propoganda when you see it. The draft Declaration drawn up by Jefferson (and amended, in his own hand, at the urging of other Southern slave-owners who thought it should not go too far in advocating freedom) was effective propoganda.

      1. Paul Cochrane says:

        Agree with you here too – stop it! This is why I am very down on the William Wallace and Robert Bruce iconography. Their victory would have meant nothing to the common man or woman. It would have been McFeudalism instead of Feudalism.

  18. I like to remember that the “politics of grievance” in which some like to frame the independence debate in an attempt to dismiss and marginalise the view that Westminster doesn’t “work” for Scotland lead to two of histories great documents.

    Obviously as I am commenting here one of them is the American declaration of independence.

    But closer to home, though it doesn’t apply to Scotland, grievance between the barons and King John led to the Magna Carta south of the border (a document that seems to have endured down the ages right up until the point people started telling off colour jokes on twitter.)

  19. Dave Coull says:

    Westminster certainly doesn’t work for Scotland. Westminster is hopelessly corrupt and incapable of reform and I will be glad when we are completely separate from it. However, that is not a reason for uncritical acceptance of historical propoganda documents as Jefferson’s Declaration, or the Magna Carta. The American Declaration of Independence was drawn up by a man who owned a very large number of black slaves, and who continued to own a very large number of black slaves for another FIFTY YEARS after the 4th of July 1776. The Magna Carta was also drawn up by slave owners, who had absolutely no intention of giving any rights to their serfs. The rights which the working class has won were won through our own struggles, not through the fancy words of our masters.

    1. Paul Cochrane says:

      Totally agree with your last 3 sentences Dave.

  20. Doug Daniel says:

    The references to “the UK” and “union” are a wee bit jarring – “Great Britain” and perhaps “the Empire” would have sounded a bit more realistic, I think!

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