That’s an interesting point, and I talked to my history professor about that once. His opinion was that even if the British had acquiesced to colonial demands, doing so would not really have solved the problem. It’s almost like they were cherry picking issues that a) they knew the British would not back down on, and b) even if they did, it wouldn’t make much difference in the long run.

Take the cry of taxation without representation. The core of this argument was that Parliament (whose authority the colonists did not recognize, as their charters came from the King) was taxing the colonies, but the colonies had no representation in Parliament. There are two responses to this; the one given at the time was that Parliament represented all Englishmen, regardless of location, and whether you voted for them or not. The colonies obviously had an issue with this. The second was that Parliament grant seats to each colony. So now they have representation, but are those votes really going to make a difference? Most likely not, unless maybe Ben Franklin is one of those delegates.

So they would have had representation, but not any that would have made a difference. Maybe it would have led the colonies down the road of detente, but I think the colonists would have kept pushing for independence, whether by treaty of through force of arms. I don’t think they would have settled for anything less than a complete break with England, even had it been through peaceable means.