TEXT 1: A GLIMPSE OF BRITISH POLITICAL HISTORY
American political system is deeply rooted in the principles developed in the course of British political history.
In 1689 the English Parliament, which had originated in the 1200s, passed the English Bill of Rights. This document, a landmark in the development of democratic government, was very important to the American colonists.
The English Bill of Rights set clear limits on what the ruler could and could not do. It applied to the American colonists — who were English subjects — as well as to the people in England. Incorporating elements from the Magna Carta*, the key ideas of the English Bill of Rights included the following ideas. Monarchs do not have a divine right to rule, they rule with the consent of the people's representatives in Parliament. The monarch must have Parliament's consent to suspend laws, levy taxes, or maintain an army. The monarch cannot interfere with parliamentary elections and debates. The people have a right to petition the government and to have a fair and speedy trial by a jury of their peers. The people should not be subject to cruel and unusual punishments or to excessive fines and bail.
The English colonists in North America shared a belief in these rights with the people of England. A major cause of the American Revolution was that the colonists felt they were being deprived of these basic rights.
The colonists had a firm belief in representative government, in which people elect delegates to make laws and conduct government. The colonists had also experienced representative government. Parliament was a representative assembly with the power to enact laws.
In America legislatures grew directly out of this English practice of having Parliament pass laws.
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*MagnaCarta — Великая Хартия Вольностей
TEXT 2: THE ENGLISH POLITICAL HERITAGE
During the 1600s people from many regions, such as Spain, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Norway, and West Africa, settled in North America. Most colonists, however, came from England. It was the English who established and governed the original thirteen colonies along the Atlantic coast.
The English colonists brought with them ideas about government that had been developing in England for centuries. By the 1600s English government offered its citizens political liberties, such as trial by jury, that were largely unknown elsewhere. At the heart of the English system were two principles of government. These principles — limited government and representative government — greatly influenced the development of the United States.
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By the time the first colonists reached North America, the idea that government was not all-powerful had become an accepted part of the English system. The idea first appeared in the Magna Carta*, or Great Charter, that King John signed in 1215. The Magna Carta established the principle of limited government, in which the power of the monarch, or government, was limited, not absolute. This document provided for protection against unjust punishment and the loss of life, liberty, and property except according to law. Under the Magna Carta, the king agreed that certain taxes could not be levied without popular consent.
The rights in the Magna Carta originally applied only to the nobility. During the next few centuries, however, other groups won political liberties, primarily through agreements between English monarchs and the nobility and merchants.
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*MagnaCarta — Великая Хартия Вольностей
TEXT 3: THE IDEAS OF JOHN LOCKE*
The ideas and writings of the seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke deeply influenced the political outlook of the American colonists. Locke spelled out his political ideas in Two Treatises on Government, first published in 1690. His writings were widely read and discussed in both Europe and America. Locke's ideas seemed to fit the American colonial experience. Colonial leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison regarded these ideas as political truth. Locke's ideas became so influential that they have been called the "textbook of the American Revolution."
Locke reasoned that all people were born free, equal, and independent. They possessed natural rights to life, liberty, and property at the time when they lived in a state of nature, before governments were formed. People contracted among themselves to form governments to protect their natural rights. Locke argued that if a government failed to protect these natural rights, the people could change that government. The people had not agreed to be governed by tyrants who threatened their rights but by rulers who defended their rights.
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Locke's ideas were revolutionary in an age when monarchs still claimed they had God-given absolute powers. Locke denied that people were born with an obligation to obey their rulers. Rather, in his Second Treatise on Civil Government, Locke insisted that freedom of people under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it.
Government, then, was legitimate only as long as people continued to consent to it. Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, written nearly a century after Locke, reflected Locke's revolutionary ideas.
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* John Locke [lok] – Джон Лок
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