Discussion question for Honors section (and whoever else), March 2-3

Here's a question to guide your "online reader" reading & for discussion on the blog (comment here) and in class:

Were the American colonists justified in exercising their rights of revolution from 1765 to 1776? (They began by resisting and effectively nullifying a particular law, the Stamp Act, and ended by dissolving their ties to Great Britain altogether.) Answer by doing the following: Read this report (by an American colonist) of Parliament's debate on the Stamp Act. Based on the speeches and the general issues, how would you (as a member of Parliament) have voted and why? Was the Stamp Act as unjust as Americans, and the main speaker in the selection, Col. Isaac Barre, claimed? Then read the Declaration of Independence. Measured by your knowledge of the colonial period, how accurate and/or justified are the series of charges the Jefferson makes against the British in the later sections of the document? Do they really add up to the alleged conspiracy to establish "an absolute tyranny over these states"?