Revisiting July 4

I suppose I shouldn't get too upset when people have overheated reactions to my annual bout of July 4 skepticism. Let me just make this one point, though, namely that to say it would have been better "had English and American political leaders in the late 18th century been farsighted enough to find compromises that would have held the empire together" is perfectly consistent with the belief that the English authorities bare the bulk of the blame for the split.

Indeed, my diffidence about independence stems in part from the recognition that war and separation wasn't by any means the first option of most of the men who wound up leading the movement for independence. But their efforts at compromise weren't welcomed in London and the result was a costly war. If you think that mistakes were made exclusively on the English side, I think you're being a bit naive, as these sorts of things never happen without a mutual lack of trust and some errors on both sides. But I don't think that the founders were wrong, sitting in Philadelphia in 1776, to think that under the circumstances independence was their best option. I only think -- as they themselves did -- that it was unfortunate that the course of events had taken them to that position, rather than to some form of compromise.

Comments

When you say the war was costly, you have to think about the costs of no war. Without the Declaration and the example of the U.S., democratic movements all over the world would have turned out differently. Or never would have happened at all.

Plus, how can you say the U.S. would have been "more awesome" if it were more like Canada? Canada's nice and all ... but it's Canada.

Posted by too many steves | July 7, 2008 5:40 PM

Bear (or bore), not bare.

Posted by Nitty | July 7, 2008 5:46 PM

Yes, I'm sure the colonial gentry were horrified at the prospect of seizing the vast wealth of America, and cutting the Crown out of the bargain. Pity it had to come to that.

Posted by dj moonbat | July 7, 2008 5:48 PM

If that is your view, then I am glad to see we do agree after all; that the war, though necessary, was surely regrettable.

Posted by Timothy Sandefur | July 7, 2008 5:58 PM

Try not to be so skeptical of July 4th. This past weekend was awesome enough to make up for the war. Let me count the ways.

1. Fireworks accident
2. Bratwursts with ketchup
3. Three day weekend
4. Wearing an American flag vest with no shirt
5. Free Mike Vick rallies
6. Free Chris Benoit t-shirts
7. Going to a bachelor party w/male strippers
8. Pooping in a lake

Love ya, bitch,
Darryl

Posted by D.A.R.R.Y.L | July 7, 2008 6:07 PM

I wished to visit July 4 on July 5.

Posted by Andruw | July 7, 2008 6:22 PM

I wished to RE-visit July 4 on July 5.

Posted by Andruw | July 7, 2008 6:23 PM

Fred Anderson's book on the French and Indian War "Crucible of War" argues that war would have come anyways due to the colonists desire to expand into Indian lands. The British made promises to the colonists and the Indians that were contradictory and would have eventually pulled apart the British Empire in North America. A settlement in 1775 or 1776 would have just delayed the inevitable conflict.

Posted by Nivardo Lopez | July 7, 2008 6:29 PM

What makes you think that Sam Adams and friends were open to any kind of compromise from the beginning? Think Ho Chi Minh.

Posted by James Wimberley | July 7, 2008 6:31 PM

On its most fundamental level, the bone of contention was this: The colonists claimed that they were British citizens, with the same rights as any British citizens living in Britain. Parliament maintained that they were not full citizens. Initially they appealed to the king to overrule Parliament and recognize them as full citizens, but he sided with Parliament. Which led the Founders to the conclusion that they could only gain the rights due them as Britons by separating from Britain.

Posted by Roddy McCorley | July 7, 2008 6:43 PM

But Sam Adams's Boston faction was just that, a faction. Just because that faction successfully manipulated events in the real world I don't know why you'd want to say that was inevitable.

Posted by washerdreyer | July 7, 2008 6:54 PM

From the Declaration, just after the bill of particulars against the King:

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

Shorter Founders: Hey, we tried, OK?

Posted by Buckeye Hamburger | July 7, 2008 7:19 PM

Forget the tone-deaf anti-patriotism. The real problem with Matt's initial post was that it wasn't sufficiently cosmopolitan.

What does it mean for a country to be "even awesomer" because of being bigger? Is it the increase in power that leads to the awesomeness?

National pride of this sort is misguided. The world is just a big bunch of people. The aggregate awesomeness of a particular nation is an arbitrary thing to be concerned with.

Instead we should focus on the well being of ourselves, our family, our friends, acquaintances, those who share our culture, then the whole world.

It's true that country overlaps with culture in a lot of ways, but that may be on the way out, as people become more mobile.

Posted by mk | July 7, 2008 7:21 PM

I strongly recommend the chapters on the American Revolution in Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly, that indicate that arrogance on the part of the British Crown pushed the Americans to independence, with Benjamin Franklin pursuing a royalist course until rather later than most Americans realize.

Posted by MR Bill | July 7, 2008 7:21 PM

Amusing to see America's evolution from a terrorist regime to a self-righteous theocracy. Such a short distance between two unsavoury extremes, and all commemorated on Traitors' Day....

Posted by georgewashington | July 7, 2008 7:23 PM

What July 4th is about is to remind us that all those who stand up for freedom and refuse to “compromise” their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are brothers and sisters and at heart Americans; that all who today try to move their countries toward a fuller recognition and implementation of these principles are working hand in hand with our founders; that American nationhood is the first ever founded on anything but an arbitrary ethnic or historical basis, but on the basis of certain shared principles, principles that can be grasped by “a candid world,” and that give hope to all men for all future time.

Jesus Christ, why can't you people just have a BBQ and some fireworks without the annual circle-jerk?

Posted by novakant | July 7, 2008 7:23 PM

sigh. Must...Close...tags/..

Posted by MR Bill | July 7, 2008 7:24 PM

A prime of example of liberal guilt.

This is why conservatives are happier than liberals.

Posted by thehova | July 7, 2008 7:34 PM

A prime of example of liberal guilt.

This is why conservatives are happier than liberals.

You've heard of "fool's paradise?"
Conservatives are keeping the condo market strong there...

Posted by MR Bill | July 7, 2008 7:39 PM

This is why conservatives are happier than liberals.

Ugh. Didn't we just do this? Of course conservatives are happier than liberals. It's easy to be happy when you don't give a shit about the suffering of others.

Posted by Cliffy | July 7, 2008 7:41 PM

Matt, I think one problem with the broader idea that the American colonies wouldn't have been subjected to increasing tyranny within the British Empire is that the War of Independance changed Britain as well. This is the real problem with many counter-factual scenarios, not that they are inherently irrelevant, but because of the multiple intended and unintended consequences of every historical choice. In Britain in the 1770s there was a real fear that George III was rolling back Parliamentary government and introducing a more autocratic form of government. Those fears may not have been justified, but what's indisputable is that the loss of the first British Empire fatally weakened the George III's prestige and made it impossible for him to have done any such thing. If that had happened than the nineteenth century history of the United States might have more closely resembled Cuba than Canada.

Posted by Ethan Hoddes | July 7, 2008 7:45 PM

"had English and American political leaders in the late 18th century been farsighted enough to find compromises that would have held the empire together"

I suppose we'd be a better nation if the leaders in the North and the South had been farsighted enough to find a compromise on that whole slavery thing too.

....Well, only if the Southerners had decided that slavery was morally repugnant and freed them all.

....And backed full rights of citizenship to the emancipated men.

....And hey why not add full rights for women too! Think of how embarrassed Northerners would have been if the South had granted women the right to vote 60 years before the rest of the country.

Bunch of sexist throwbacks, those Northerners.

Posted by Jinchi | July 7, 2008 7:50 PM

They felt themselves ready to rule themselves. And they were right.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 7, 2008 9:20 PM

In Britain in the 1770s there was a real fear that George III was rolling back Parliamentary government and introducing a more autocratic form of government. Those fears may not have been justified, but what's indisputable is that the loss of the first British Empire fatally weakened the George III's prestige and made it impossible for him to have done any such thing. If that had happened than the nineteenth century history of the United States might have more closely resembled Cuba than Canada.

Eh, George III wasn't really rolling back parliamentary government. He governed as a parliamentary faction leader, essentially, leveraging the power of the throne to buy parliamentary seats and the like in the same way that the Whig grandees had done in the previous generation. And the extent to which the war destroyed his power is very questionable. In December 1783, at what one would imagine would be the nadir of royal prestige thanks to the recent defeat, George III was still able to dismiss the Fox/North ministry, which commanded a clear parliamentary majority, to appoint a more amenable ministry under Pitt the younger, to dissolve parliament and to basically insure that the new parliament would give Pitt a majority. This is no different than what he was doing before the Revolution - in fact, dismissing Fox and North was arguably the greatest attack on the Constitution that he made.

The real decline of the monarchy occurred much later than this story would suggest - it was really not until the First Reform Bill in 1832 did away with rotten boroughs and the like that the King was unable to (most of the time, at any rate) appoint whatever ministry he wanted and insure at least a bare parliamentary majority for it. And both Victoria and Edward VII still interfered to a considerable extent in parliamentary politics, particularly relating to foreign policy. The apolitical monarchy dates not to George III, but to George V in the early twentieth century.

Just beyond, that, some of these arguments are a bit weird. Yes, there would have been dispute with the British over western lands. Does that make Revolution inevitable? Only if the British insist on siding with the Indians against their own colonists. This seems unlikely. Yes, Britain did change as a result of the war, and George III was indeed chastened (if not to the extent some would claim). But the whole point of the counterfactual argument is clearly one where Britain was governed by people who were, in fact, willing to make concessions. Those were not the kind of people who were down with George III's executive overbearingness, so obviously the counterfactual is suggesting the idea of a change in British policy, not colonial.

Posted by John | July 7, 2008 9:27 PM

Most people in this country have learned only part of the story. I highly recommend the segment of Barbara Tuchman's March of Folly which deals with what was going on (politically) in England at the time. Londoners were actually quite sympathetic to the colonists, but they were under-represented, and the rest of England was all in favor of teaching those filthy savages a lesson.

It could have happened very differently. Better or worse? Who knows.

Posted by Gordon | July 7, 2008 9:32 PM

Re: Those fears may not have been justified, but what's indisputable is that the loss of the first British Empire fatally weakened the George III's prestige and made it impossible for him to have done any such thing.

The fact that George suffered a disease that drove him into insanity is what ultimately destroyed his attempt to reassert royal authority after the previous two Georges (who spoke only German) had let it lapse. That was inevitable no matter what happened in 1776*. Add to that the fact that George's two sons, George IV and William IV were both decadent idiots, while elsewhere men of true brilliance (the younger Pitt, the Duke of Wellington, Canning) were coming into their own, and Britain's parliamentary form of government was assured for the future. A graver danger lay in the French Revolution and the reaction against it and against Napoleon.

* Nevertheless George governed within the limits set by the Glorious Revolution of 1688. There's no evidence that he wished to go further back, to the attempted autocracy of the Tudors and early Stuarts.

Posted by JonF | July 7, 2008 10:06 PM

Royalty and nobility are obsolete and degrading institutions and we are really better off without them.

They would have constricted the aspirations and the imagination of the American people, and saddled all of us with the burden of an upper-class built to no extent on merit, but rather on arbitrary criteria (family). Upper-class and powerful Americans working on currying favor with these arbitrarily chosen individuals, instead of just working for their own benefit and purely public-spirited goals, would have been an inefficient and stifling arrangement. Besides that, England's institution of monarchy probably hurt the world by giving the English too much to rationalize their right to empire around (the idea that their nation's rulers were picked by God, which is of course makes a lot more dramatic impression than in a democracy, where people clearly are voting for all the rulers, no matter how you try to rationalize the source of governmental power).

No nation should be ruled by nobility in any capacity (even one that is mostly for show) and we would all be better of if there was no nobility anywhere.

Posted by Swan | July 7, 2008 10:10 PM

That's lame. Have the courage of your convictions, Matthew.

Posted by Al | July 7, 2008 10:54 PM

The American colonies were exactly that in 1776: COLONIES. No different than the classic colonies Britain exploited in India and Africa except for the fact that the governing population were white people, many of British descent, and that Parliament had not had the resources or interest to carefully control the local government during America's formative years. But the relationship between empire and colony was essentially the same as other traditional colonies in that America was meant wholly to exist as a means to suck resources into England for the King's benefit while America would be forced to take back the mother land's inferior goods and help out with their military problems. All this in order to subsidize the ruling country's standard of living and local interests.

Once Americans discovered that this was the case after having been led to believe otherwise by Britain's previous disinterest in their affairs and the colonists' British origins, they did what any rational people would do and agitated for their interests until reaching the most obvious way to guarantee their liberty -- independence. The British had no interest in giving them control over their affairs or a seat in parliament, it would have defeated the whole purpose of having a colony to exploit. The differences were wholly irreconcilable to begin with, England could not have pacified the colonies and maintained their long term interests simultaneously.

In addition to Canada being a pretty lame role model for the US to aspire to (don't all their famous people move here and then pretend to be Americans? Neil Young, Robbie Robertson, etc.?) it is highly unlikely they would have been treated as they were if Britain were not chastened by their experience in America and if Canada had more natural resources and a larger population worth stealing from.

Posted by Dan Panorama | July 7, 2008 11:44 PM

I don't think that the founders were wrong, sitting in Philadelphia in 1776, to think that under the circumstances independence was their best option.

Not by 1776: Lexington was the breaking point, and it's easy to see the fractures forming around the Seven Years' War.

Shorter Founders: Hey, we tried, OK?

You do realise that that's a polemic, not an affadavit, right? It's a fantastic bit of rhetoric, and Americans do seem to love rattling it off on July 4th, but Taxation No Tyranny is pretty fine rhetoric too.

George governed within the limits set by the Glorious Revolution of 1688. There's no evidence that he wished to go further back, to the attempted autocracy of the Tudors and early Stuarts.

Quite so. On his accession in 1760, he was considered a breath of fresh air: the monarchy skipped a generation to someone who considered himself British rather than a Hanoverian princeling with a side job as king. For all that, though, no eighteenth century British monarch is in a position to forget what happened to James II, and to suggest that George III was likely to go all ancien regime in London is quite the stretch.

They would have constricted the aspirations and the imagination of the American people, and saddled all of us with the burden of an upper-class built to no extent on merit, but rather on arbitrary criteria (family).

Indeed. The idea that the children of heads of state should inherit their mantle is something the free, independent US would never tolerate. Oh.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 8, 2008 2:01 AM

"There never was a good war, or a bad peace".

There were those on the British side who would have accepted compromise ... General Howe did extend an olive branch I seem to recall. And Howe fought the war much like McClellan wanted to fight the Civil War: a conflict between armies settled by restoring the antebellum status quo with an tweak here and there.

Who knows what might have happened if the British had a U.S.Grant?

As it was, it was French intervention that was decisive... counting the French navy, there were more French forces at Yorktown than American. And what did the former colonials do?.... make a separate peace without any thanks or "by your leave..." to their French allies.

But it was a necessary war, somewhat less glorious that myth (and Mel Gibson) would have us believe, but with glorious results.

A war that I can never view with anything other than regret is the war of 1812. Here we had the most democratic country in the world fighting the second most democratic, which at the time was engaged in a death struggle with a military despot, Napoleon. What if American intervention had brought about Britain's defeat and the triumph of French imperialism?

Posted by toby | July 8, 2008 4:27 AM

I can never take July 4th seriously as a holiday, because the implication is that had we not thrown off the yolk of British oppression, we may well have ended up like....Canada, or Australia for that matter...the horror!

Posted by DRR | July 8, 2008 4:34 AM

with Benjamin Franklin pursuing a royalist course until rather later than most Americans realize.

Ah, yes, Ben Franklin... or "Agent No. 79" as he was known to British Naval Intelligence.

As it was, it was French intervention that was decisive... counting the French navy, there were more French forces at Yorktown than American.

Quite. It's a bit odd to decide that the (relatively mild) colonial rule of Georgian England is intolerable tyranny, and instead to throw in one's lot with the France of Louis XVI.

Posted by ajay | July 8, 2008 5:36 AM

One impression a foreigner gets while reading history is that Colonials were a bunch of ingrates, glad to receive expensive protection of the Crown during French and Indian war, and very reluctant to pay modest taxes when the dangers were gone.

One conclusion is that "bonds of gratitude" are not particularly enduring. But because the British "atrocities" were relatively puny, perhaps the real conflict was caused by the sense of vast possibilities that Colonials could tap without interference of the Crown, starting with an enormous swath of fertile land that could be colonized. All classes or the Colonial society knew that however well meaning the Crown would be, they would be better of without it.

I think the only compromise that would endure would make the power of the Crown nominal only, and this would be very much against British way of thinking.

Posted by piotr | July 8, 2008 5:37 AM

My favorite Colonist complaint about King George:

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

We had to be independent to really get our genocide on.

Posted by SqueakyRat | July 8, 2008 6:00 AM

One impression a foreigner gets while reading history is that Colonials were a bunch of ingrates, glad to receive expensive protection of the Crown during French and Indian war, and very reluctant to pay modest taxes when the dangers were gone.

The colonists were right to want their self-determination. No people should be ruled by a monarch, or have a legislature composed completely of foreigners who live on the opposite side of a huge ocean that takes weeks to cross have the final say on their affairs.

The "atrocities" may have been puny, but I think that is under-stating things. Sure, the British were not going to exterminate the colonists Nazi-style. But is that the only crime worth fighting against? Of course not. Shows of force like the Boston massacre were only the tip of the iceberg-- symbols of what the British had power to do to the colonials if it wished. The colonials didn't have to wait for the British to start putting hundreds of people in prison to have a good reason to fight. The power to do it was there, and therefore those kinds of consequences were imminent if the colonials were going to continue to resist a rule that was no longer justified by relevant facts about the colonists lives-- but rather only on arbitrary history.

What protection and benefit did the crown provide to the colonists? The colonists earned their place in America by their own sweat and blood, while England skimmed profit off the top of it. As much as a person has a right to profit by his or her own labor, the colonists had a right to throw off English rule.

People who apologize for the English sound like closet monarchists to me. We definitely don't need to go back to a more primitive way of doing things. An idea like that is against the kind of things that make/made America great. We didn't become the leader in the world by submitting to an arrangement where the strongest and best men had to submit to the command and whims of people whose value was purely symbolic or traditional.

Posted by Swan | July 8, 2008 6:59 AM

or have a legislature composed completely of foreigners who live on the opposite side of a huge ocean that takes weeks to cross have the final say on their affairs.

Aside from the ocean bit, how does that differ from the next 130 years of conquest and rule over people who, with good reason, would consider the U.S. Congress foreigners?

Language is funny: as I've said here before, the American national myth has this deterministic character, whereby the current borders of the nation were somehow already there, just waiting to be uncovered and filled out. In fact, the westward and inward expansion was, by dint of numbers, more of a colonial enterprise than the settlement undertaken by the European powers in Canada and the Antipodes.

So Swan: you're basically regurgitating junior-high civics class as if it's history. The actual motivations and interests behind the struggle for independence were a fair bit more complicated.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 8, 2008 9:55 AM

they should throw that guys blog on wikipedia under "putting words in someone's mouth"

Posted by josiah | July 8, 2008 10:06 AM

"What if American intervention had brought about Britain's defeat and the triumph of French imperialism?"

Terrible vision. I guess, we would endure metric system and obligatory French in schools. Can you imagine French, mangled by East Asians, as the language of world commerce?

Posted by piotr | July 8, 2008 10:35 AM

What protection and benefit did the crown provide to the colonists?

Ahem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_indian_war

Note the number of British (ie non-colonial militia) involved. You'd be speaking French right now if it weren't for them.

Posted by ajay | July 8, 2008 10:54 AM

I never beieved the colonists' case, as they made it, was at all persuasive, and I never saw a potential compromise that would have been worth a damn. Nevertheless, I support the Revolution. The colonies were, as another poster pointed out, colonies. They had benefited from the expensive exertions of the mother country, and it was only fair that they should foot some of the bill. True, as British citizens, they ought to have been taxed by representative bodies, but how? Parliamentary representation would have answered on the theoretical level, but even with fair representation (unlikely in pre-Reform Law Britain), the colonial representatives would predictably and consistently lose. Allowing colonial legislatures to determine the taxes to be paid to the mother country would, in effect, be the abdication of government by the mother country. As a practical matter, the colonies had gone for many years without anything approaching real government, and when the Empire began to get serious about governing, they were bound to resent it. The only case the colonies had was that they wanted to run their own show, and that was sufficient. The rest was nonsense.

Posted by CJColucci | July 8, 2008 11:07 AM

I never beieved the colonists' case, as they made it, was at all persuasive, and I never saw a potential compromise that would have been worth a damn. Nevertheless, I support the Revolution. The colonies were, as another poster pointed out, colonies. They had benefited from the expensive exertions of the mother country, and it was only fair that they should foot some of the bill. True, as British citizens, they ought to have been taxed by representative bodies, but how? Parliamentary representation would have answered on the theoretical level, but even with fair representation (unlikely in pre-Reform Law Britain), the colonial representatives would predictably and consistently lose. Allowing colonial legislatures to determine the taxes to be paid to the mother country would, in effect, be the abdication of government by the mother country. As a practical matter, the colonies had gone for many years without anything approaching real government, and when the Empire began to get serious about governing, they were bound to resent it. The only case the colonies had was that they wanted to run their own show, and that was sufficient. The rest was nonsense.

Posted by CJColucci | July 8, 2008 11:09 AM

I never beieved the colonists' case, as they made it, was at all persuasive, and I never saw a potential compromise that would have been worth a damn. Nevertheless, I support the Revolution. The colonies were, as another poster pointed out, colonies. They had benefited from the expensive exertions of the mother country, and it was only fair that they should foot some of the bill. True, as British citizens, they ought to have been taxed by representative bodies, but how? Parliamentary representation would have answered on the theoretical level, but even with fair representation (unlikely in pre-Reform Law Britain), the colonial representatives would predictably and consistently lose. Allowing colonial legislatures to determine the taxes to be paid to the mother country would, in effect, be the abdication of government by the mother country. As a practical matter, the colonies had gone for many years without anything approaching real government, and when the Empire began to get serious about governing, they were bound to resent it. The only case the colonies had was that they wanted to run their own show, and that was sufficient. The rest was nonsense.

Posted by CJColucci | July 8, 2008 11:09 AM

You're lamenting the tragedy of the Revolutionary War, and wish instead some sort of compromise could have been reached? Jesus H. Christ, Yglesias, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard you say. It sounds like a huge effort to come across as thoughtful and intellectual but comes off instead as a parody of the weak-kneed liberal pacifist.

Posted by Adam | July 8, 2008 11:58 AM

"Canada's nice and all ... but it's Canada"
"In addition to Canada being a pretty lame role model for the US to aspire to (don't all their famous people move here and then pretend to be Americans?"

Honestly guys, if you believe another country is inferior you could at least come up with credible measures of what makes living in a country worthwhile instead of lamely offering up your ignorance of another nations' virtues as an argument. I don't believe the US is inherently superior to a lot of other developed countries, it just happens to be that it (NYC in particular) has the mix of good qualities and bullshit that makes me want to live here for the time being. Having lived in Canada for a decade I can attest to its many virtues as a nation as well as it's failings. So quit with the ignorant Canada-bashing guys. In closing, let's look at 3 things Canadians have done better than the US, for educational purposes.

1)Living standards for their people as a whole. Canada has topped the UN's Human Development Index 10 times in the past 20 years and beaten out the US every single time.

2)A sensible gap between the rich and the poor. The gini coefficient (Wiki it kids!) and the US are not exactly bff.

3)Superior beer. Ok, I'm kidding here, but come on guys. Most American beer is absolutely horrid stuff. What I really mean is...Tolerance and inclusiveness. After all, the embrace and protection of diversity are a government policy enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (aka there is an amendment about it in Canada's Constitution).

Posted by DJ ImagoDei | July 8, 2008 2:30 PM