The article focuses on a British intellectual and lexicographer Samuel Johnson’s (1709-1784) views on the rights and freedoms of people living in Britain’s North American colonies. It accounts for the reasons of Johnson’s negative attitude to colonial people’s attempts to repeal taxes and seek representation in the English parliament. The writer despised American colonists, for he believed them to descend from the first settlers who had oppressed and enslaved the indigenous population. Moreover, the lexicographer believed that the majority of American colonists belonged to the lower classes, were descendants of criminals and paupers who had disturbed the peace in the Old World and had fled to the New World to escape their just punishment. The unrest in the American colonies in the 1770s only aggravated Johnson’s prejudices. His worldview prevented the lexicographer from understanding why American colonists weren’t satisfied with the position of British subjects and wanted to be represented in the British Parliament. Johnson believed that American colonists were anarchists wishing to shatter the British rule.