No taxation without representation

[6] The person who first suggested the idea of Parliamentary representation for the colonies appears to have been John Oldmixon, an English annalist of the era of Queen Anne or George I.

In the course of the 1760s and 1770s, William Pitt the Elder, Sir William Pulteney, and George Grenville, amongst other prominent Britons and colonial Americans, such as Joseph Galloway, James Otis Jr., Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, the London Quaker Thomas Crowley , Royal Governors such as Thomas Pownall M.P., William Franklin, Sir Francis Bernard, and the Attorney-General of Quebec, Francis Maseres, debated and circulated plans for the creation of colonial seats in London, imperial union with Great Britain, or a federally representative British Parliament with powers of taxation that was to consist of American, West Indian, Irish and British Members of Parliament.

[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] Despite the fact that these ideas were considered and discussed seriously on both sides of the Atlantic, it appears that neither the American Congress, nor the colonial Assemblies, nor the British Government in Westminster, at least prior to the Carlisle Peace Commission of 1778, officially proposed such constitutional developments.

[29]Jared Ingersoll Sr., colonial agent for Connecticut, wrote to his American colleague, the Royal Governor of Connecticut Thomas Fitch, that following Isaac Barre's famous Parliamentary speech against the Stamp Act in 1764, Richard Jackson, M.P., supported Barre and other pro-American M.P.s by producing before the House copies of earlier Acts of Parliament that had admitted Durham and Chester seats upon their petitions for representation.

[35]Edmund Burke responded to Knox, who had drawn up The Controversy between Great Britain and her Colonies Reviewed as well as The Present State of the Nation under the supervision of George Grenville, by opining in his political tract Observations on a Late State of the Nation: NOW comes [Knox's] American representation ... Is not the reader a little astonished at the proposal of an American representation from that quarter [of Grenville's]?

It is proposed merely as a project of speculative improvement; not from the necessity in the case, not to add any thing to the authority of parliament: but that we may afford a greater attention to the concerns of the Americans, and give them a better opportunity of stating their grievances, and of obtaining redress.

As I meddle with no theory, I do not absolutely assert the impracticability of such a representation; but I do not see my way to it; and those who have been more confident have not been more successful ... My resolutions, therefore, mean to establish the equity and justice of a taxation of America by grant, and not by imposition; to mark the legal competency of the colony assemblies for the support of their government in peace, and for public aids in time of war; to acknowledge that this legal competency has had a dutiful and beneficial exercise, and that experience has shown the benefit of their grants, and the futility of Parliamentary taxation, as a method of supply.

[39] However, Burke apparently qualified such remarks concerning America by stating in the same speech that: The Parliament of Great Britain ... is never to intrude into the place of the [provincial legislatures], whilst they are equal to the common ends of their institution.

We are engaged in war,—the Secretary of State calls upon the colonies to contribute,—some would do it, I think most would cheerfully furnish whatever is demanded,—one or two, suppose, hang back, and, easing themselves, let the stress of the draft lie on the others,—surely it is proper that some authority might legally say, 'Tax yourselves for the common Supply, or Parliament will do it for you.'

[39]The views of Knox, Grenville and Burke did not go unchallenged: William Pitt was amongst those who disputed that a Parliamentary right or power existed to levy "internal" taxes "for the purposes of raising a revenue" without the consent of actual representatives of the "Commons of America".

"[40] In 1764, the Massachusetts politician James Otis, Jr., said that: When the parliament shall think fit to allow the colonists a representation in the house of commons, the equity of their taxing the colonies, will be as clear as their power is at present of doing it without, if they please ...

The resolutions of the Congress stated that the Stamp Act had "a manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonists" and that "the only Representatives of the People of these Colonies, are Persons chosen therein by themselves, and that no Taxes ever have been, or can be Constitutionally imposed on them, but by their respective Legislature.

"[47] To those sympathetic to republicanism, such as James Burgh, Catherine Macauley, and Richard Price, any tax revenue measures that were voted into effect without the direct representation of Americans were "unconstitutional" and "pernicious".

[56] James Macpherson, a colonial secretary of British West Florida, defended the North administration in an officially sponsored polemic in 1776 named The Rights of Great Britain Asserted.

"[60][61] The noted economist Adam Smith seconded this view in his famous 1776 publication Wealth of Nations when he recommended the Americans "to send fifty or sixty new representatives to Parliament" on the basis of the amount of taxes they would contribute to the Imperial coffers.

[62] Writing in October 1776 to Lord North in Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress of the recent Declaration of Independence, and particularly of James Otis, Jr.'s pamphlet Rights of the British Colonies and its endorsement by the Massachusetts Assembly, Governor Thomas Hutchinson said, The Assembly of Massachusetts Bay, therefore, was the first that took any publick of the [Sugar] Act, and the first which ever took exception to the right of Parliament to impose Duties or Taxes on the Colonies, whilst they had no representatives in the House of Commons.

"We virtually and implicitly allow the institutions of any government of which we enjoy the benefit and solicit the protection," declared Samuel Johnson in his political pamphlet Taxation No Tyranny.

However, the tradition of greater democracy amongst Americans gave impetus to the well-founded charge, voiced by Britons and colonists alike, that virtual representation was "sophistry" and "a mere Cob-web, spread to catch the unwary, and intangle [sic] the weak.

After his first affirmation of "no taxation without representation" Camden was attacked by British PM Grenville, Chief Justice James Mansfield, Robert Henley, 1st Earl of Northington, and others.

Nor, my Lords, is the doctrine new, it is as old as the constitution; it grew up with it; indeed it is its support; taxation and representation are inseparably united; God hath joined them, no British parliament can separate them; to endeavour to do it, is to stab our very vitals.

I can never give my assent to any bill for taxing the American colonies, while they remain unrepresented; for as to the distinction of a virtual representation, it is so absurd as not to deserve an answer; I therefore pass it over with contempt.

'"[83]In an appearance before Parliament in January 1766, former Prime Minister William Pitt stated: The idea of a virtual representation of America in this House is the most contemptible that ever entered into the head of a man.

[84]Grenville responded to Pitt, saying the disturbances in America "border on open rebellion; and if the doctrine I have heard this day be confirmed, nothing can tend more directly to produce a revolution."

[85] In the 1860s, suffragette Sarah E. Wall of Worcester, Massachusetts invoked the principle of "no taxation without representation", initiating an anti-tax protest in which she encouraged women not to pay taxes until they were granted the right to vote.

Even still, Wall refused to cooperate with the collector, and as a result, officers seized and sold her property in order to raise the money necessary to meet her tax obligation.

[86] In 1884, Susan B. Anthony cited Wall's audacity and willingness to stand up for women's suffrage, stating, "for the last twenty-five years, [she] has resisted the tax gatherer when he came around.

[93] A modified version of the phrase, "no tuition without representation", is sometimes used in disputes over governance in higher education in the United States to emphasize student's rights to a voice in institutional decisions.

In Canada, Quebec politician Gilles Duceppe, former leader of the Bloc Québécois, has repeatedly cited this phrase in defending the presence of his party in Ottawa.

Duceppe's evocation of the phrase implies that the proponents of Quebec's sovereigntist movement have the right to be represented in the body (which they are), the Canadian Parliament, which levies taxes upon them.

[107] British Prime Minister John Major used a modified version of the quote, with the order reversed, in October 1995, when at the United Nations's 50th Anniversary celebrations he said, "It is not sustainable for states to enjoy representation without taxation," in order to criticize the billion-dollar arrears of the United States' payments to the UN, echoing a statement made the previous month at the opening session of the UN General Assembly by UK Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind.