Wrong,,,, They only wanted the same rights as Englishmen
Yes- but that IS classical liberalism- since the word liberal comes from the word “liberty”- they wanted their rights and liberties as free Englishman conserved, and King George was not giving it to them as colonists. Many of these were rights the English had one for themselves about a century earlier, during the English Civil War- a fight between the parliamentarians and monarchists. The parliamentarians had won. Conservatives were the ones fighting to preserve the monarchy and aristocracy.
King George was not giving the new colonists these rights because he did not consider them full Englishmen, and was not granting them full representation in parliament. That’s why one of the slogans of the American revolution was “no taxation without representation” (not “no taxation”- which is the slogan of today’s American conservatives).
Today’s use of the word liberal as coming to mean “favoring more regulations” comes from much later- the early industrial revolution. Early in the industrial revolution, belief in the complete free market was strong, and the rising factories and the factory owners were operating without any regulations.. This was leading to ever increasing monopoly power of a few large corporations, who were generating a lot of wealth, but all of it was staying in the hands of a handful of factory owners, who were becoming more wealthy than entire nations. The ever increasing exploitation and horrible working conditions of factory workers, and the ever increasing disparity of wealth between the workers and the factory owners, was leading to a lot of social instability. There was no real trickle down effect. The expanding and growing exploitation and abuse of of child labor was particularly appalling to many people.
These are the working conditions that led to Karl Marx calling for violent revolution by the workers. These Marxist parties were actually starting to make significant gains in the polls, especially in Europe which were the first countries to have undergone industrialization. Radical violent Marxist leftists were calling for violence and bloodshed. This really began to reach a boiling point by the 1890s in Europe.
So this is where a group of “neoliberals”, wanting to preserve the free market and keep violent leftist Marxists at bay, proposed a few basic and common sense regulations on the free market, such as child labor laws, workplace safety laws, minimum-wage laws, and allowing of worker unionization. The conservatives at the time were those classical liberals fighting to preserve a complete free market and the plutocracy that was developing- more akin to the libertarians of today. But with the passage of these laws and regulatory measures pushed by the neoliberals, things stabilized and the free market was saved. These laws ended up serving as a pressure valve to keep the pot from completely exploding and keeping Marx’s predictions from coming true. So it was really these liberals who saved the free market from violent Marxist communism.
Over time, these “neoliberals” came to be known as just “liberals”, and the conservatives came to mean those who did not believe in any regulation or safety nets on the free market.
Just a short history on how the words we use today came to have the meanings that they do- and why they sound similar to but mean such different things from the way these words were used in the past. One can see how this can create so much confusion nowadays.