S8 Ep587: 2. Joseph Ellis, *The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773 to 1783*. King George III exerted unprecedented power by using £800,000 from the royal treasury to essentially purchase the interests of roughly 30% of Parliament. This financi
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
2. Joseph Ellis, *The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773 to 1783*. King George III exerted unprecedented power by using £800,000 from the royal treasury to essentially purchase the interests of roughly 30% of Parliament. This financial influence allowed him to control Britishpolicy as a monarchical act, even while claiming to defend parliamentary authority. Benjamin Franklin initially sought to bridge the gap between the empire and the colonies by proposing a British Commonwealth model. However, after being publicly humiliated by the Privy Council, Franklin was radicalized, becoming an incalculable asset for the American cause as a wise and patient diplomatic negotiator. (2)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI in the world. |
| 0:06.9 | I'm John Batchel with Professor Joseph Ellis. |
| 0:09.0 | His new book is The Cause, the American Revolution and its discontents. |
| 0:14.5 | 1773 to 1783. |
| 0:17.1 | 1774 passes with the Continental Congress and into 75. |
| 0:22.0 | And there are three men who represent the different views of this disorder between mother country, which is what the region calls it, mother country. |
| 0:35.3 | George III, he uses that term before and after the conflict, |
| 0:39.2 | mother country and the colonies. And the three men require a revelation of one in particular, |
| 0:45.8 | the conservative, John Dickinson. Professor, what was John Dickinson in 74, 75, to the cause? |
| 0:54.1 | He was the single most listened to voice. |
| 0:57.9 | He was the most prominent figure, and he was only 28 years old. |
| 1:01.1 | He was educated at King's College at now Columbia in New York and spent some time in the |
| 1:07.5 | Middle Temple in London, very well-educated young man. |
| 1:11.0 | But he's a kind of creature who would have simply never appeared in history if there weren't for this crisis. |
| 1:16.8 | Crisis create leadership or create the opportunities for it. |
| 1:20.8 | And he's called, he has a series of essays under the title of The Farmer, a letters from the farmer, |
| 1:27.0 | which lay, which frame out the American constitutional position. |
| 1:32.3 | You cannot tax us, you cannot legislate for us, |
| 1:36.3 | and our rights as Englishmen. |
| 1:40.3 | He is temperamentally conservative. |
| 1:43.3 | He really doesn't want to, in any kind of precipitous way, lead Americans over the abyss into the war. |
| 1:54.3 | And he is his most recent biography who has somewhat rescued him from oblivion, although there is a |
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