The colonies' experiences of oppression provided a basis for bringing them together and actively rejecting their former allegiance to the British government. Unfair taxes and economic restrictions focused the colonists' attention on the inequity of the British government and the need to dissociate themselves from it. Over time, the ideologies of individuals such as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson helped make widespread discontent a reasonable cause for rebellion. Money laid the foundations of the great revolution that ideology developed and