From Ferrara’s book and what I know of the Revolution itself, I fail to see how recourse to armed revolt was justified. Certainly the Enlightenment thinking behind the Revolution was fundamentally at odds with Catholic teaching, including St Thomas calling revolt ‘sedition’ and the long standing view that authority was divinely ordained. Indeed, under Julian the Apostate Christians obeyed his rule when it did not conflict with Church teaching, even serving in his army.
The argument for Revolution was not simply that “taxes were too high.” It was much more than that, and there were profound constitutional issues at stake. Essentially, the question was this:
Were the colonies in a relationship with the Crown or Parliament?
If the answer to that question was the Crown, then Parliament had no authority to tax the colonies. Parliament was the legislature for Great Britain only. Each colony had its own legislature, which was equal to Parliament within its own sphere.
This is what the Patriots believed. The colonies were united to the Crown, and therefore, the colonial legislatures were mini-Parliaments.
By the time of the American Revolution, Britain was already becoming a constitutional monarchy. The Glorious Revolution ended any notion of absolute monarchy. Parliament was supreme. Laws were made by the King in Parliament (with the emphasis on Parliament). Only Parliament could make laws and raise taxes.
An Englishmen, the Americans claimed the same prerogatives for themselves. Their colonial assemblies alone should be able to enact laws and taxes binding to the colonists. The king had the right to appoint royal governors to represent his interests and veto colonial laws, but most of the power was already in the hands of the assemblies by the Revolution anyway.
Parliament’s attempt to enact direct taxation upon the colonies, according to this interpretation of the imperial constitution, was a usurpation of power.
