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Quiz for Document 6–5: Edmund Burke, Speech to Parliament, March 22, 1775

Choose the best answer to each question.

1. What reason did Burke list for the American drive for liberty?

Colonists were the descendants of the rebellious underclass in Europe.

Colonial citizens were unshackled from church and faith.

Colonial slavery made freedom a matter of rank and privilege.

Colonists had suffered centuries of overbearing English bureaucracy.

2. How did Burke think losing the colonies might affect trade and the British imperial economy?

He did not think losing trade with the colonies would be a problem for the British.

He argued that trade with European countries was more important.

He thought that trade with Canada and the Caribbean would be enough to sustain the British imperial economy.

He believed that colonial trade was too big a part of the British economy to let it go so easily.

3. What did Burke mean when he spoke of Great Britain’s “wise and salutary neglect” of the colonies?

Great Britain had been too lenient with religion, which had led to general disdain for the government’s authority.

They left trade too unregulated, which allowed the colonies too much economic independence.

They were too generous with the colonies and left them to their own devices, which allowed the “spirit of liberty” to grow in the colonies.

The king had given his colonial officials too much authority, and they had become corrupt.

4. According to Burke, what was the role of religion in the American colonies?

The colonists were very irreligious, which made them immoral and rebellious.

Because they were mostly Protestants, it made them even more likely to reject submitting to authority.

The British did not give the colonies enough religious freedom, which led the colonists to rebel.

Religion had played little to no role in their rebellion.