<P> The U.S. Declaration of Independence inspired many other similar documents in other countries, the first being the 1789 Declaration of Flanders issued during the Brabant Revolution in the Austrian Netherlands (modern - day Belgium). It also served as the primary model for numerous declarations of independence across Europe and Latin America, as well as Africa (Liberia) and Oceania (New Zealand) during the first half of the 19th century . </P> <P> Believe me, dear Sir: there is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do . But, by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose; and in this, I think I speak the sentiments of America . </P> <P> By the time that the Declaration of Independence was adopted in July 1776, the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain had been at war for more than a year . Relations had been deteriorating between the colonies and the mother country since 1763 . Parliament enacted a series of measures to increase revenue from the colonies, such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767 . Parliament believed that these acts were a legitimate means of having the colonies pay their fair share of the costs to keep them in the British Empire . </P> <P> Many colonists, however, had developed a different conception of the empire . The colonies were not directly represented in Parliament, and colonists argued that Parliament had no right to levy taxes upon them . This tax dispute was part of a larger divergence between British and American interpretations of the British Constitution and the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies . The orthodox British view, dating from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, was that Parliament was the supreme authority throughout the empire, and so, by definition, anything that Parliament did was constitutional . In the colonies, however, the idea had developed that the British Constitution recognized certain fundamental rights that no government could violate, not even Parliament . After the Townshend Acts, some essayists even began to question whether Parliament had any legitimate jurisdiction in the colonies at all . Anticipating the arrangement of the British Commonwealth, by 1774 American writers such as Samuel Adams, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson were arguing that Parliament was the legislature of Great Britain only, and that the colonies, which had their own legislatures, were connected to the rest of the empire only through their allegiance to the Crown . </P>

What was already going on in america when the declaration of independence was signed
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