Question

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass [sic] our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power" - from The Declaration of Independence To whom does "He" refer in this passage? A) George Washington B) Thomas Jefferson C) King George III D) William Pitt

Answer 1

The correct answer is C, as "He" refers to King George III in the passage.

The passage belongs to the accusation of the Declaration of Independence of the United States, and refers to the motives that the settlers had to seek independence from Great Britain.  

Relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain had deteriorated since 1763. The British Parliament enacted a series of measures to increase taxes in the colonies, such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Laws of 1767. This legislative body he considered that these rules were a legitimate means for the colonies to pay a fair share for the costs of keeping them in the British Empire.

However, many settlers had developed a different concept of the empire. The colonies were not directly represented in the Parliament and the settlers argued that the legislature had no right to assign taxes to them. This fiscal dispute was part of a greater divergence between the British and American interpretations of the Constitution of Great Britain and the scope of Parliament's authority in the colonies. The orthodox view of the British - dating back to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 - argued that Parliament had supreme authority throughout the empire and, by extension, everything that Parliament did It was constitutional, but in the colonies the idea had developed that the British Constitution recognized certain fundamental rights that the government could not violate, not even Parliament. After the laws of Townshend, some essayists even began to question whether Parliament had any legitimate jurisdiction in the colonies, anticipating the creation of the Commonwealth of Nations, in 1774 the American idealists discussed whether the authority of Parliament was limited only to Great Britain and that the colonies - which had their own legislatures - should relate to the rest of the empire solely because of their loyalty to the Crown.