gutzmankYes, it’s certainly true that George III hadn’t personally committed/been responsible for some of the acts with which the Declaration charges him. British response to the Declaration generally was to find the list of allegations against him either risible or bewildering. The reason he was named rather than Parliament or a past king is that the colonists had long since agreed Parliament was, as Jefferson said in “A Summary View of the Rights of British America,” “foreign to our constitutions and unknown to our laws” (or some such), and so what remained was to accuse the king of having wantonly violated colonists’ rights.
Of course, his August 1775 proclamation that the colonies were in rebellion, thus the complaining colonists were beyond his royal protection, satisfied many waverers that the tie to George III had to be severed.