Britain's Reaction

Thomas Paine's pamphlet, Common Sense, published in 1776, urged revolution. Paine wrote: "The period of debate is closed. Arms, as the last resource, must decide the contest…Every thing that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'Tis time to part'." This reading shocked us in Great Britain. But what shocked the British even more was the Declaration of Independence, which was not just a call for independence, but a statement of it signed by many prominent Americans. The king and Parliament knew it seriously challenged British authority.
One of the British presses, the Morning Post, outraged, was first to respond. They replied to the "Disunited States in America," writing about how Americans scorned "the duty and allegiance which in honor and in necessity they owe" to Great Britain. The government's response, an 80-page pamphlet, The Rights of Great Britain Against the Claims of America, followed, attacking the Declaration, paragraph by paragraph.
The Americans were such ungrateful subjects, betraying their mother country. All Great Britain did was protect and help them, but in return the Americans were struggling for their independence. The British
government found that the Americans' "pretended arguments justifying rebellion" so disobedient and uncalled for that it saw no other way, but to crush the rebellion.

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