How much support did the American Revolutionary ideals receive from the British public at the time?

About 50 to 75% of British colonists living in the North American colonies in the era of the American Revolution were literate. This is a higher percentage than British people in Britain.

One brilliant writer Soame Jenyns attacks the various arguments of those who opposed the Stamp Act. Jenyns argues that the three arguments of consenting to taxation are false. The radicals claimed that they cannot be taxed without consent of themselves, the consent of his representative, or consent of the majority of the representatives he has elected. Jenyns refutes all of these arguments with actual evidence, He also asks the million dollar question “Are they only Englishmen, when they sollict for Protection, but not Englishmen, when Taxes are required to enable this Country to protect them?” Jenyns also through logical syllogism brings the logical reasoning of the radical colonists to its conclusion. If taxes are not equal that means they are not just which means that no power can impose them which means that there can be no taxation at all. Jenyns later highlights the eloquent radicalism of the revolutionary eliute when he states “I have lately seen so many Specimens of the great Powers of Speech, of which these American Gentlemen are possessed, that I should be much afraid, that the sudden Importation of so much eloquence at once, would greatly endanger the Safety and Government of this Country.” Showcasing the need to understand different costs, he cleverly surmises “it will be much cheaper for us to pay their Army, than their Orators.”

John Hancock, the one with the largest signature on “The Declaration of Independence” was a smuggler and the wealthiest man in the colonies. As you come to look at the evidence you realize that the pamphlets are not written by farmers and tradesmen or reflective of the common will but reflective of a narrow radical revolutionary elite manipulating the masses through deceit and lies. The signers of the Declaration of Independence included merchants, landowners, lawyers, judges, and slaveholders.

. I thought that Tories would have used Hobbes, Filmer, Sybthorpe, Mandeville, Mainwaring, Wedderburn speeches, and the statutes of King Henry VIII like a satirist suggested in that era. Instead they used Enlightenment figures in their arguments.

According to some scholars, only 40% to 45% of colonists supported the rebellion. 20% to 25% were Loyalists. This meant that 35% to 40% were neutral.

The French and Indian War caused extreme debt for both the British and French. This was later one of the causes for the French Revolution.

The Stamp Act was intended by Prime Minister George Grenville to be a progressive tax and as such includes a large tax on items such as land sales, college diplomas, alcohol, playing cards, and legal documents.

The Imperial School of historiography believe that the British Empire was economically beneficial to the American colonies. However, with the elimination of the French as a threat as a result of the French and Indian War, the colonists questioned why they needed Britain.

In the French and Indian War, provincial troops pitched tents any way they pleased. They also located latrines for convenience rather than sanitation, right in the midst of camp, and they dug wells close by. Due to this lack of sanitation, more men were killed by the filth in camp than in battle

There were people in Britain who criticized the Revolutionary War but they were mostly radical Whigs.

John Wilkes also thought that Bunker Hill was a British failure. But instead of “vigorous and better planned measures,” Wilkes advocated gentleness toward the rebels. Wilkes also called the war “unjust, ruinous, felonious, and murderous.” If he had not said these words in Parliament, then he would have been arrested. Wilkes had been arrested previously for libel and was disliked by King George III. Wilkes may have been the most pro-American British MP but his support for the suppression of the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots would have angered the fierce anti-Catholic Puritans of Massachusetts. Also, starting in 1783, Wilkes had become more conservative, voting against radical Whig Charles Fox’s East India bill and opposed the impeachment of Warren Hastings. If a radical Whig like Wilkes could be corrupted by the British political economy, then perhaps the people of Massachusetts could as well.

Edmund Burke thought that the American Revolution was based on the tradition of the "free-born Englishman."

Sources:

Soame Jenyns, The Objection to the Taxation of our American Colonies, by the Legislature of Great Britain, Briefly Consider’d. (London: J. Wilkie, 1765), 9-18.

United States Declaration of Independence.

Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).

Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988), 207.

Lewis Namier, The House of Commons, 1754-1790 (Members K-Y), vol. 3 of The House of Commons, 1754-1790 eds. Lewis Namier and John Brooke (1964; repr., London: Secker & Warburg, 1985). http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1754-1790/member/wilkes-john-1725-97 (accessed February 24, 2017); Nick Robins, The Corporations That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational (New York: Pluto Press, 2006); and Stephen R. Bowen, Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600-1900 (New York: Douglas & McIntyre, 2009). The East India Bill would create a board of governors overseen by Parliament and more resistant to Crown patronage. Warren Hastings was the first Governor-General of India and accused of mismanagement and personal corruption.

5 George III, c. 12