These Fairfax Resolves, as they became known, reflected the views of the “Country Party” of landed British gentry, who had protested what they saw as the corruption of Britain’s constitution by venal politicians during Robert Walpole’s ministry earlier in the century. The resolves argued that people should obey only laws enacted by their chosen representatives or else “the government must degenerate either into an absolute and despotic monarchy or a tyrannical aristocracy.”
