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Sujet du devoir

bonjour, j'ai deux textes suivants:



1er texte :
John Dickinson's second letter


Après la constitution du ministère présidé par le duc de Grafton en 1766, Charles Townshend revint à la politique de Grenville dans son projet de budget pour 1767. Considérant comme parfaitement aberante la distinction que les coloniaux faisaient entre taxes internes et externes, il fit voter des impôts sur les importations de papierr, de peintures, de verre et de thé. L'argent devait servir à payer les salaires des gouverneurs , des juges , afin de les rendre indépendants des assemblées locales. En décembre 1767 la Pennsylvania Chronicle publia des lettres anonymes. Leur auteur n'était autre que l'éminent homme de loi du barreau de Philadelphie, John Dickinson (1732-1808), natif du Maryland, et déjà très lié au parti du Propriétaire par affinité sociale et religieuse, mais radical par sa pensée politique. Il dénonça la supercherie de Townshend, déguisant en régulation de commerce des taxes destinées à procurer un revenu.
There is another late act of parliament, which seems to me to be as destructive to the liberty of these colonies, as that inserted in my last letter; that is, the act for granting the duties on paper, glass,. It appears to me to be unconstitutional. The parliament unquestionably possesses a legal authority to regulate the trade of Great-Britain, and all its colonies. Such an authority is essential to the relation between a mother country and its colonies; and necessary for the common good of all. He, who considers these provinces as states distinct from the British Empire, has very slender notions of justice, or of their interests. We are but parts of a whole; and therefore there must exist a power somewhere to preside, and preserve the connection in due order. This power is lodged in the parliament; and we are as much dependent on Great-Britain, as a perfectly free people can be on another.
I have looked over every statute relating to these colonies, from their first settlement to this time; and I find every one of them founded on this principle, till the Stamp-Act administration. All before, are calculated to regulate and preserve or promote a mutually beneficial intercourse between several constituent parts of the empire; and though many of them imposed duties on trade, yet those duties were always imposed with design to restrain the commerce of one part, that was injurious to another, and thus promote the general welfare. The raising a revenue thereby was never intended. (...) . Never did the British parliament, till the period abovementioned, think of imposing duties in America, for the purpose of raising a revenue . (...). Here we way observe an authority expressly claimed to impose duties on these colonies; not for the regulation of trade; not for the preservation or promotion of a mutually beneficial intercourse between the several constituent parts of the empire, heretofore the sole objects of parliamentary institutions; but for the single purpose of levying money upon us.
This I call an innovation; and a most dangerous innovation. It may perhaps be objected that Great-Britain has a right to lay what duties she pleases upon her exports, and it makes no difference to us, whether they are paid here or there.

To this I answer. These colonies require many things for their use, which the laws of Great-Britain prohibit them from getting any where but from her. Such are paper and glass. That we may legally be bound to pay any general duties on these commodities relative to the regulation of trade, is granted; but we being obliged by the laws to take from Great-Britain, any special duties imposed on exportation to us only, with intention to raise a revenue from us only, are as much taxes, upon us, as those imposed by the Stamp-Act.
What is the difference in substance and right whether the same sum is raised upon us by the rates mentioned in the Stamp-Act, on the use of paper, or by these duties, on the importation of it. It is nothing but the edition of a former book, with a new title page. (...). Some persons perhaps may say, that this act lays us under no necessity to pay the duties imposed, because we may ourselves manufacture the articles on which they are laid : whereas by the Stamp-act no instrument of writing could be good, unless made on British paper, and that too stampt. (...). I am told there are but two or three glass-houses on this continent, and but very few paper-mills; and suppose more should be erected, a long course of years must elapse, before they can be brought to perfection. This continent is a coutry of planters, farmers, and fishermen; not of manufacturers. The difficulty of establishing particular manufacturers in such a country, is almost insuperable. (...). Great-Britain has prohibited the manufacturing iron and steel in these colonies, without any objectionbeing made to her right of doing it. The like right she must have to prohibit any other manufacture among us. Thus she is possessed of an undifputed precedent on that point. This autority, she will say , is fouded on the original intention of settling these colonies; that is, that she should manufacture for them, and that they should supply her with materials. (...).
Here then, let my countrymen, rouse yourselves, and behold the ruin hanging over their heads. If they once admit, that Great-Britain may lay duties upon, her exportations to us, for the purpose of levying money on us only, she then will have nothing to do, but to lay those duties on the articles which she prohibits us to manufacture and the tragedy of American liberty is finished. (...). If Great-Britain can order us to pay what taxes she pleases before we take them away, or when we have them here, we are as abject slaves, as France and Poland can shew in wooden shoes, and with uncombed hair. (...).




2ème texte :
An extract from Common Sense
Thomas Paine : "This time to part" (january 10, 1776).


England since the conquest hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones: yet no man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honourable one. A French bastard landing with an armed Banditti and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. It certainly hath no divinity in it. However it is needless to spend much time in exposing the folly of hereditary right; if there are any so weak as to believe it, let them promiscuously worship the Ass and the Lion, and welcome. I shall neither copy their humility, nor disturb their devotion . (...) In England a King hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which, in plain terms, is to empoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived. (...). In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense: and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day. (...). The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair of a City, a County, a Province, or a Kingdom; but of a Continent of at least one-eighth part of the habitable Globe. 'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed-time of Continental union, faith and honour. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters. (...). But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families. Wherefore, the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so, and the phrase PARENT OR MOTHER COUNTRY hath been jesuitically adopted by the King and his parasites, with a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new World hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from EVERY PART of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still. (...). 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. Even the distance at which the Almighty hath placed England and America is a strong and natural proof that the authority of the one over the other, was never the design of Heaven. The time likewise at which the Continent was discovered, adds weight to the argument, and the manner in which it was peopled, encreases the force of it. The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America: As if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety. (...) . Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverses the common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England to Europe, America to itself. (...). No man was a warmer wisher for reconciliation than myself, before the fatal nineteenth of April 1775, but the moment the event of that day was made known, I rejected the hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of England for ever; and disdain the wretch, that with the pretended title of FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE, can unfeelingly hear of their slaughter, and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul. (...). O ye that love mankind I ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth ! Every spot of the Old World is overrun with oppression. Freedom has been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England has given her warning to depart. O ! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

Où j'en suis dans mon devoir

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je vous demande de bien vouloir m'aider svp ...
je ne comprend pas vraiment ces 2 textes, ils sont difficiles ...

svp aidez moi svp...