We need not now, when they are, or ought to be, dead, spend any time in deploring them.

It suffices to explain them and the events to which they led.

There was one and really only one final issue.

Were the American colonies free to govern themselves as they liked or might their government in the last analysis be regulated by Great Britain?
The truth is that the colonies had reached a condition in which they regarded themselves as British states with their own parliaments, exercising complete jurisdiction in their own affairs.

They intended to use their own judgment and they were as restless under attempted control from England as England would have been under control from America.