The eighteen paragraphs of denunciation fall into seven general sections: The King has thwarted representative government; he has obstructed justice; he has placed military above civil power; he has imposed taxes without the consent of the taxed; he has abolished the rule of Law; he has placed obstacles in the way of the growth and prosperity of the Colonies; he has, in effect, ceased to rule them, because he is making war on them. So the bill of complaint signifies these things about the Founders of our Country: They demanded government with the consent, by the representatives, of the governed. They cherished civil rights, respect for law, and would not tolerate any power superior to law--whether royal or military. They wished for a minimum of civil duties, hated bureaucrats, wanted to adjust their own taxes, and were afraid of the establishment of any tyranny on nearby soil. They wanted free trade with the rest of the world, and no restraints on commerce and industry. They intended to be prosperous. They considered themselves freemen and proposed to remain so. These were the rights to which lovers of human freedom aspired in England or France; they were the practical application of Locke and Rousseau and the Encyclopedists and the Roundheads. Little in the whole list reflects the special conditions of life in the colonies; troops had been quartered in Ireland, trial by jury suspended in England, tyrants then as now created their Praetorian guard or Storm Troops and placed military above civil rights, and colonies from early time had been considered as tributaries of the Mother Country. _The Practical "Dream"_ The American Colonists were about to break the traditions of European settlement, and with it the traditions of European government. And, with profound insight into the material conditions of their existence, they foreshadowed the entire history of our country in the one specification which had never been made before, and _could_ never have been made before: "_He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands._"