| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Methods/Theory

John Phillip Reid. The Ancient Constitution and the Origins of Anglo-American Liberty. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2005. Pp. 188. $32.00.

For thirty years John Phillip Reid has been making what Barbara Black has called "the case for the colonists." In a series of deeply researched books and articles, Reid has explicated and defended the constitutional and legal arguments advanced by American patriots during the imperial crisis of the 1760s and 1770s. This book continues that task: "the British who opposed the American version of the constitution were 'looking ahead,' away from the ancient constitution, to government by consent, to a constitution of parliamentary command, in which government was entrusted with arbitrary power and civil rights were grants from the sovereign. The Americans were 'looking backward,' not to government by consent but to government by the rule of law, to a sovereign that did not grant rights but was limited by rights" (p. 52).

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