Abolishing English law in one province threatens the same arbitrary rule everywhere.

Evidence

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies; For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments; For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. — Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 29 (#expands, via linked claim)

In fact, what we are dealing with in the analysis of limited war is tradition. We are dealing with precedent, convention, and the force of suggestion. We are dealing with the theory of unwritten law—with conventions whose sanction in the aggregate is the need for mutual forbearance to avoid mutual destruction, and whose sanction in each individual case is the risk that to breach a rule may collapse it and that to collapse it may lead to a jointly less favorable limit or to none at all, and may further weaken the yet unbroken rules by providing evidence that their “authority” cannot be taken for granted. — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 596 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Unwritten law rests on fear that breaking one rule collapses all — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 596; Abolishing English law in Quebec was a template for ruling the colonies — Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 29

Broader Connections

• Abolishing English law in Quebec was a template for ruling the colonies #expands (1.00) — Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 29
• Unwritten law rests on fear that breaking one rule collapses all #complicates (0.95) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 596