Taxation no Tyranny

Taxation no Tyranny is an influential essay written by Samuel Johnson in 1775 which addressed the issue of Parliamentary sovereignty in the United Kingdom in response to the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress.

Historian Gordon S. Wood noted of the essay that the "doctrine of sovereignty almost by itself compelled the imperial debate to be conducted in the most theoretical terms of political science.

As noted by Gordon Wood, this meant that for Johnson, "Such a sovereignty needed no representational justification" whereas "those zealots of anarchy" (in the 13 colonies) were promoting an effrontery that "no one had ever had".

[6] Historian A. J. Beitzinger drew parallels between Johnson's phrase of sovereignty and gradations with Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson, who said he knew of "no line that can be drawn between the supreme authority of Parliament and the total independence of the colonies.

Yale's Sterling professor of History Edmund Morgan wrote that "Virginians may have had a special appreciation of the freedom so dear to republicans, because they saw every day what life without it would be like.