 Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to begin by once again thanking hands for having had the goodness to invite you back to address this most interesting conference. This is number six, and I can't say they get better and better because all the others have been very good as well. But this is very much the high point of the libertarian calendar in this part of the world, or perhaps outside the United States. So thank you, hands. Another point I'd like to make is that many of you have given outstandingly good speeches, and you may want to see them published. Now, the Libertarian Alliance is not a wealthy organisation, but we do pay the grand sum of 50 pounds for anything original that we publish. And so if you would like to receive some of the Libertarian Alliance's lagesa, please do feel free to submit your speech to me. I'll pass it to Dr Mee, our editorial director, and we'll see what we can do. The third preliminary point I'd like to make is that last year I spoke about what might have happened in the absence of a Second World War. And I said that my dear friend, the novelist Richard Blake, was working on an alternative history novel. Well, I was wrong about that. I made a serious mistake. It was not my friend Richard Blake who was writing this novel, it was actually me. A pardonable oversight, I'm sure you'd agree. But here is the finished product. I won't say anything in its favour except that it has received some very good reviews. It is dedicated to Hans Ferlin Hopper, who is very kindly accepted for the dedication. And you may consider the possibility of buying a copy and getting it inscribed by me. My dear friend Richard Blake has had several more novels published. There are some copies of this one over there and I may be able to persuade him to come out of his room and to sign one for you. There is one coming out on the 9th of June, but the box of books that Hodder and Stout normally sends didn't arrive. And I was only able to bring two copies with me, one of which I gave to Hans, the other of which Paul Vapour has got. The rest of you are afraid if you want to buy it, you must order it on Amazon or go into Waterstones in England. So that is my preliminary stuff out of the way. When I was with Hans last year in Vienna he suggested it would be a good idea if I spoke this year on the subject of the case against the American War of Independence. And we both had a good laugh over that and I went away and thought about it. And I suppose I have something to say, but I'd like to preface my remarks by saying that I do have a very unjust reputation for being anti-American. This is deeply unjust and I hope that that will show itself as I continue with this morning's speech. The other thing I would say is that I do accept that for many Americans this is a very sensitive subject. And so I appreciate that I must tread very carefully in all that I say about the grand myth of their nation's foundation. And so I shall be as polite and as impartial as I can possibly be. Now I spoke about the founding myth of America and I think it's worth spelling out what this myth is. The story of the foundation of the United States is that King George III of England set out from the moment of his coronation in 1760 to roll back all of the constitutional achievements of the 17th century. And he wanted to reduce his subjects in England, in Scotland, in Ireland and in the American colonies to absolute and arbitrary subjection. And that in order to accomplish this wicked design, he employed worthless and corrupt ministers, the Marcus of Butte, Lord Townsend, Lord North, etc. And that eventually when all normal means of redress had failed, when American pleas for moderation and reasonableness were thrown back in their faces, the Americans had no choice but to take up arms and to vindicate their liberties as Englishmen and their natural liberties as men, and then to give themselves a constitution which would secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and to their posterity for ever and ever and ever. And it's a very fine story, a very inspiring story. I'm just not sure to what extent it is a true story. If you read the Declaration of Independence, and of course all of the Americans in this hall know it by heart, you'll see that it is both true and original. Sadly, however, from my own reading of it, the parts of the Declaration of Independence that are true are not original, and the parts that are original are not true. The true parts are the opening paragraphs. We hold these truths to be self-evident, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, mankind are inclined to suffer evils rather than complain, but when a long train of abuse is directed at one end, etc., etc., it is their right, it is their duty to rise up and to make such future safeguards as may be necessary. Well, very fine stuff, but it is copied word for word almost from the second treatise of John Locke. If anyone's curious about this, I can direct you to the relevant patches later on. When we move to the long litany of complaints against the British authorities, these are, at the very least, grossly exaggerated. Most of these taxes didn't even cover their cost of collection. The only tax which was worth collecting was the excise on tea, which brought in a total of £12,000 a year. Now, if that's tyranny, I'd like to share some of it. And even those parts of the Declaration that are not necessarily unreasonable, perhaps they are unreasonable actually, look, the British authorities were faced in the 1770s with an increasingly armed insurrection. And many of the actions of the rebels would nowadays be regarded as armed terrorism. And although the reaction of the British authorities may not always have been entirely proportionate, at least those authorities did not bomb civilian areas flat and then drag many of the survivors into torture chambers. And the British authorities also did not send out men to assassinate the rebel leaders. But obviously we shouldn't talk about those matters. It's not always entirely polite. What I will say is that the stated grounds of the American Revolution do not strike me as a satisfactory explanation of the great outburst of violence and of a long revolutionary war. And indeed there are many other people. You can denounce these people as lefties who simply don't like American freedom, but we do need to look at what other explanations there might be for the American Revolution. I suppose we could say that it was a stab in the back for the first 150 years of their existence. The American colonies were rather small and poor, and they had rather large French colonies in the north breathing down their necks. Well, at the end of the Seven Years War, by 1763, the French had been cleared out of North America, and there really was nothing to stop the American colonists from spreading out across the whole of the North American continent, and they didn't need British protection anymore. And so why not go for independence? Not entirely creditable as an explanation, but perhaps not unreasonable either. There are claims that I've never bothered investigating that many of the American rebel leaders were head over heels in debt to bankers in London, and that a revolutionary overthrow of British rule was their best way out of bankruptcy. Now, I've never bothered looking at these claims, and I do know that you should never believe anything you read about American history unless you investigate the facts for yourself, and I haven't investigated those facts. There is then the most scandalous explanation, the most scandalous alternative explanation of the American Revolution, which is that it was not caused by the shot that rang around the world, but by a judgement in the King's Bench Court in London in 1772, when a runaway slave, the case of Rhys-Sommerset, a runaway slave was apprehended by his master, put in chains on a ship moored in London, ready to be shipped off back to Jamaica, and Grandville's sharp and various other abolitionists went into court demanding a writ of habeas corpus, and Lord Chief Justice Mansfield was eventually nagged and bullied into declaring that since slavery as an institution was unknown to the common law of England and was not sanctioned by any active parliament, therefore any slave who set foot on English soil was automatically free. Now, the various colonial charters that governed America usually contain the provision that the colonial courts should, so far as may be convenient, conform their decisions to English law. And I do know that there was much interest in the colonies in the early 1770s in the case of Rhys-Sommerset, and it may be no coincidence that it is after 1772 that the colonial agitation grew in both volume and intensity. When I'm in a particularly anti-American mood, and I'm arguing with particularly stupid Americans on the internet, I denounce their revolution as the slave holder's rebellion. However, let's be reasonable about this. Most Americans did not own slaves. There were many colonies, there were some colonies in which slavery was illegal, and it would be unrealistic to explain the American Revolution simply in terms of the interest of the southern planters in maintaining their peculiar institution. I think, when you've looked at all of the revisionist literature, that the most likely explanation for the disaffection of the American colonists was their claim that there could be no taxation without representation. It is not an unreasonable claim. It is not a discreditable claim. It seems to have been the claim that was the lowest common denominator. There may well have been many other economic and political and other interests that led the American colonies towards separation. But the one claim that seems to unite all of those various interests is the claim that there could be no taxation without representation. I do say that it was not unreasonable. However, it was also a fundamentally unacceptable claim. It is not that King George III was stupid or tyrannical. It is not that his ministers were corrupt and evil. The simple fact is that the American claim of no taxation without representation was absolutely unacceptable to the King, to the British ruling class and probably to most of the people of Great Britain. To explain this, let me say something about the British constitution. It's an unwritten constitution and it's often rather opaque when foreigners try to understand it. But there are two fundamental laws in the British constitution which cannot be altered without abolishing the constitution itself. The first of these is that England is a divine right monarchy. If I look at a coin, this is a £2 coin, it says, Elisabeth II de Gratia regina fide defensor, Elisabeth II by the grace of God Queen defender of the faith. The British people didn't put Elisabeth II on the throne. Elisabeth II is not responsible in any sense to the British people. She was placed there by God Almighty and she is responsible to God Almighty alone. She is absolutely above the law. If she was so inclined, Elisabeth II could walk out of Buckingham Palace with a loaded 357 and walk up and down the mall repeating one of the more theatrical of those American school shootings and she could not be punished for any murders that she might commit. She could not be tried, she could not be punished and any police constable who tried to arrest her would be guilty of high treason. You cannot lay violent hands upon the Lord's anointing. If you do, you will go to hell and before you go to hell you will suffer the punishment prescribed by law for high treason. That is one of the fundamental laws of the British constitution. You may readily agree that it is not just or expedient for a creature of such unlimited powers to be the actual head of government. The Queen of England has more theoretical powers than the hidden imam in Shiite Islam. During the past 350 years the convention has emerged that the crown is above the law, the crown can do no wrong and therefore the crown can do nothing at all except through responsible ministers. Today if the Queen wishes to appoint a new Bishop of Oxford she cannot do it, it is done in her name by the relevant minister. If she wishes to appoint a new ambassador to Washington it is done in her name by the relevant minister. If she decides that it is just and fitting to commit British forces to Libya, this again is not done by the Queen, it is done in the Queen's name by the relevant minister. A minister who is an ordinary subject and who is fully responsible to the courts and fully responsible to Parliament. Although by the 1760s and 70s the full modern doctrine of cabinet government had not yet emerged, the convention had emerged that the King should only act through his ministers and that although the King could appoint such ministers as he saw fit, the Marquess of Bute for example who was his tutor, those ministers had to be acceptable to Parliament and that if any minister was not acceptable to Parliament, if any minister was unable to manage the ordinary business of Parliament then he should resign and be replaced by minister who was responsible, who was acceptable to Parliament. This is not a law of the constitution, it is a custom, it is a convention. However it is not an arbitrary convention. All of the conventions that underlie the British constitution are not random, they reflect actual relationships of power within the British state and the reason for this convention of ministerial responsibility to Parliament is the second law, the second basic law of our constitution. Which is that although she is responsible to God alone, the Queen cannot impose taxes without the consent of Parliament. There can be no taxes without an act of Parliament to allow their collection. And this is the foundation of such English liberty as has existed, not much left now, but this is the foundation of such English liberty as did exist in the past, that if the King wanted to carry on the normal government of the country he had to give the entire direction of that government to ministers who were responsible to Parliament. And accountable to Parliament, a Parliament which was in a rather vague way accountable to the British people. Now the constitutional disputes of the 17th century all fundamentally revoled around this claim that there could be no taxation without parliamentary consent. Indeed there could be no revenue collected without parliamentary consent and during the 17th century and indeed well into the 18th century the King of England did have other sources of supply. He was not totally reliant on Parliament for his income, for his means of carrying on the government of the country. The King was the largest landowner in the country and collected large amounts of money in rent. He also was the feudal lord of the country and collected various medieval feudal dues. For example, if a rich man died and his daughter came of age, the King was able to find her a husband and if she didn't want that particular husband she would have to pay a fine to the King. There was the sale of monopolies in the reign of Elizabeth I and James I, a monopoly in playing cards, a monopoly in face powder, a monopoly on the sale of French wine. There was also things like ship money, an old medieval custom under which the counters of England which ordered the sea were required to build ships for the country's defence. Or if they didn't want to build a ship they would give money to the King to build a ship and the early Stuart Kings got their lawyers to work on this and they extended ship money to the whole country to raise money without any act of Parliament. There was also the grant by Parliament in the first year of every King's reign of the lifetime right to collect certain customs duties. This was granted in the first year of the King's reign and it continued for the rest of the King's life. There were then two other Parliaments in the King Dominions. There was the Scottish Parliament and the Irish Parliament and although Scotland Island were very poor countries it was possible by ruthless extortion to raise reasonable sums of money from these. So the King was not totally dependent on Parliament but of course the King did lead to succulent his regular income also with regular acts of Parliament allowing him to collect emergency taxation. Much of the constitutional development of the 17th and 18th century was various acts of shutting down these other sources of supply. Monocles were declared illegal by the courts in the 1620s. The various feudal dues and things like ship money were declared illegal and were abolished in 1640 and 1641. Other traditional means of raising finance were also abolished at the restoration of Charles II in 1660. The Irish Parliament was tightly controlled by the 18th century by the Privy Council in London and could not pass any law for any purpose without the consent of the Privy Council in London which was a committee of the ruling class in England. The Scottish Parliament was closed down in 1707. Officially it was a merger of the two Parliaments but effectively the Scottish Parliament was shut down. The Crowns were united or the Countries were united within Great Britain and a number of Scottish MPs were allowed to sit in the Parliament in London. In 1760 George III handed over all of the Royal Estates to Parliament in return for an annual grant of money called the Civilist. By 1760 the constitutional progress of the 17th century was complete. The King had to appoint ministers acceptable to Parliament because the only source of finance for the King's government came from Parliament. They were locked together. The American claim of no taxation about representation was a challenge to this. Many Americans regard the American Revolution as a natural development from the glorious revolution in England of 1688. In fact what the Americans were demanding was a reaction. They were demanding not progress, they were demanding a reaction to the situation in the 17th century. They were possibly in danger the whole structure of English constitutional liberty as it had developed in the 17th and 18th centuries. I know that the Americans did sincerely believe that King George III governed England through the British Parliament and he governed Rhode Island through the Rhode Island Colonial Assembly and New York through the New York Assembly and Delaware through the Delaware Assembly and that all of these assemblies were of equal status. There were many British radicals. There was a major cartwright who said that the true glory of the British constitution is that it is a constellation of self-governing colonial assemblies throughout the whole of the empire and Richard Price said the same. Richard Price is the dissenting preacher, one of whose sermons provoked Burke to write his reflections on the French Revolution. But you see if you were a member of the British ruling class in the 1760s and 1770s you would not see the American demands for taxes to be granted only by their own assemblies and for the coordinate status of all parliamentary bodies throughout the empire. As reasonable, you would see it as unreasonable and unacceptable. The big fear was, it might have happened at once but the thing about the American colonies is that they were growing all the time in numbers and wealth and it was reasonable to suppose that they would over the next 50 years or 100 years spread out across the whole of the North American continent and that by 1850 or 1860 there would be individual colonies, any one of which was as rich and as populous as Great Britain itself and all of these endowed with assemblies which were technically the equal of the parliament in London. Now given that possibility it might then be possible for a future king to be able to play off those assemblies against each other. If he cannot get the money he wants out of the parliament in London he could take himself off to New York and to Delaware and to Rhode Island and to all the other colonies across the sea and he could get the money he needed from them. The king would have slipped the noose in which the British ruling class had placed him at the end of the 17th century. He would no longer be locked into a symbiotic relationship with parliament acceptable with parliament elected by the people. He could go on a shopping trip around the empire picking up money, picking up money there and being accountable in the real sense to nobody at all rather like the modern European Union which can play off the various nationalities against each other. It is the Victorians who came up with the idea of inimitable progress and that Britain had become a constitutional monarchy and would remain a constitutional monarchy. The Victorians also had the luxury of having enjoyed constitutional monarchy for rather longer than the men of the 1760s and 70s had. Looked at from the position of many in the British ruling class in the 1760s and 70s, the whole constitutional structure of the country as it had emerged from the revolution of 1688 was on an unstable equilibrium. Any sudden shock could knock the whole thing over, any lack of balance in any part of the constitution could destroy the whole. The American claim of no taxation without representation was a claim that their assemblies had co-ordinate status with the parliament in London and this could not be accepted. That is the reason for the declaratory act made by parliament in 1767 which said that the parliament in London is supreme throughout the whole of the empire. It can make and unmake any law it chooses and it can lay on any tax anywhere in the empire that it may choose. The Americans may have seen this as the beginnings of tyranny but seen from the point of view of British constitutional law this was an absolutely necessary declaration to make. Parliament is the supreme authority throughout the empire. If you say anything else you put the entire free constitution of England in danger. Of course one of the problems of the American revolutionary dispute is that this was never properly spelled out to the Americans. Indeed it is very difficult if you look through the speeches and pamphlets and letters of people at the time in England to see this doctrine clearly spelled out. But it does follow logically from the whole progress of the British constitution in the 17th and 18th centuries and although people may not always fully understand the reason for their actions their actions themselves are usually highly rational. And this is the true explanation for British intransigence in the face of the demands of the colonists. It was not a desire to grind the colonists into the dust. It was not a desire to reduce them to absolute and arbitrary slavery. It was a necessary defence of the British constitution at home. And once you see things in this light you see King George III not as an aspiring tyrant. Indeed if George III had been an aspiring tyrant he would have put himself at the head of the American colonists agitation. He smiled on these men and said yes I agree this is the true British constitution. There can be no taxation without representation and your assemblies are just as good as far as I'm concerned as the parliament in London. But George III didn't do that. He stood solidly behind his ministers and he was never inclined even to talk about a deal which could easily have been on the table. And you cannot say that the British authorities at the time were acting tyrannically. Oh that's what they were acting stupidly and people like Edmund Burke and William Pitt the Elder said look yes we accept that parliament is supreme but don't push it with the Americans. We have the right to tax these people but don't do it. I just asked them for help. Maintain the full theoretical supremacy of parliament but do nothing to revoke an American reaction. And yes the town's end duties were unwise and Lord North's determination to maintain the excise on T was unwise but it really was not an aspiring tyranny. There's no long train of abuses directed at a single end which is the subjection of everyone to an absolute and arbitrary tyranny. The Americans if I can use the phrase were not a progressive force in the world. They were a reactionary force in the world. So without I think having shocked any American sensibilities and without having caused great offence I think I have put a case of sorts against the American war of independence. It may have been inevitable. It may have been the only solution to the constitutional crisis that blew up in the 1760s and 70s. But when it comes to weighing up the rights and wrongs of the American war it is actually very difficult to say that the British were in the fullest sense to blame. The American demands were unacceptable and it would have been better if everybody had realised in the 1760s and 70s that this was an insoluble dispute. And some means have been found of effecting a peaceable separation. Ok I've run out of time and I'd like to thank you for having heard me with such good grace. Thank you very much.