No taxation without representation
"No taxation without representation" is a political slogan that originated in the American Revolution, and which expressed one of the primary grievances of the American colonists for Great Britain. In short, many colonists believed that as they were not represented in the distant British parliament, any taxes it imposed on the colonists were unconstitutional and were a denial of the colonists' rights as Englishmen since Magna Carta.
The firm belief that the government should not tax a populace unless that populace is represented in some manner in the government developed in the English Civil War, following the refusal of parliamentarian John Hampden to pay ship money tax. In the context of British taxation of its American colonies, the slogan "No taxation without representation" appeared for the first time in a headline of a February 1768 London Magazine printing of Lord Camden's "Speech on the Declaratory Bill of the Sovereignty of Great Britain over the Colonies," which was given in parliament. The British government argued for virtual representation, the idea that people were represented by members of Parliament even if they didn't have any recourse to remove them if they were unsatisfied with the representation, i.e. through elections.
The term has since been used by various other groups advocating for representation or protesting against taxes, such as the women's suffrage movement, advocates of District of Columbia voting rights, students seeking to be included in governance in higher education, the Tea Party movement, and others.
Prior to the American Revolution
According to Michael Hudson, the idea had an early precedent in medieval English law, which established the principle in Magna Carta where chapter 12 states that “o scutage or aid is to be levied in our kingdom, save by the common counsel of our kingdom.”Since 1660, the English Parliament had exercised control over colonial trade and imposed taxes on imports and exports. By the 1760s, the Americans were being deprived of a historic right. The English Bill of Rights 1689 had forbidden the imposition of taxes without the consent of Parliament. Since the colonists had no representation in Parliament, the taxes violated the guaranteed Rights of Englishmen. Parliament initially contended that the colonists had virtual representation, but the idea "found little support on either side of the Atlantic". 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. It was afterwards put forward with approbation by Adam Smith, and advocated for a time, but afterwards rejected and strongly opposed, by Benjamin Franklin."
The 1768 Petition, Memorial, and Remonstrance, which was written by the Virginia House of Burgesses was likewise sent to Parliament, only to be ignored.
American Revolution
The phrase had been used for more than a generation in Ireland. By 1765, the term was in use in Boston, and local politician James Otis was most famously associated with the phrase, "taxation without representation is tyranny." In the course of the Revolutionary era, many arguments were pursued that sought to resolve the dispute surrounding Parliamentary sovereignty, taxation, self-governance and representation.Representative proposals before 1776
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. 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. Governor Thomas Hutchinson apparently referred to a colonial representational proposal when he wrote that,The Assembly of Massachusetts Bay was 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. This they did in a letter to their Agent in the summer of 1764... And in this letter they recommend to him a pamphlet, wrote by one of their members, in which there are proposals for admitting representatives from the Colonies to fit in the House of Commons... an American representation is thrown out as an expedient which might obviate the objections to Taxes upon the Colonies, yet... it was renounced... by the Assembly of the Colony which first proposed it, as utterly impracticable.
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. The argument was put forward in Parliament that America should have representatives on these grounds, too. Richard Jackson supposed that Parliament had a right to tax America, but he much doubted the expediency of the Stamp Act. He said if it was necessary, as ministers claimed, to tax the colonies, the latter should be permitted to elect some part of the Parliament, "otherwise the liberties of America, I do not say will be lost, but will be in danger."
The Knox-Burke debates
William Knox from Ireland, an aide of George Grenville, pamphleteer and subsequent Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, received an appointment in 1756 to the American provinces, and after his return to London in 1761, he recommended the creation of a colonial aristocracy and colonial representation in the British Parliament. He was shortly afterwards appointed agent for Georgia and East Florida, a post which he forfeited by writing in favor of the Stamp Act. In his Grenville-backed pamphlet of 1769, The Controversy between Great Britain and her Colonies Reviewed, Knox suggested that colonial representatives might have been offered seats in the British Parliament if they had sought such representation. Knox submitted that:Whilst exclaim against Parliament for taxing them when they are not represented, they candidly declare they will not have representatives lest they should be taxed... The truth... is that they are determined to get rid of the jurisdiction of Parliament... and they therefore refuse to send members to that assembly lest they should preclude themselves of plea legislative acts... are done without their consent; which, it must be confessed, holds equally good against all laws, as against taxes... The colony advocates... tell us, that by refusing to accept our offer of representatives they... mean to avoid giving Parliament a pretence for taxing them.
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 American representation... Is not the reader a little astonished at the proposal of an American representation from that quarter ? 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. I am glad to find the author has at length discovered that we have not given a sufficient attention to their concerns, or a proper redress to their grievances. His great friend would once have been exceedingly displeased with any person, who should tell him, that he did not attend sufficiently to those concerns. He thought he did so, when he regulated the colonies over and over again: he thought he did so, when he formed two general systems of revenue; one of port-duties, and the other of internal taxation. These systems supposed, or ought to suppose, the greatest attention to, and the most detailed information of, all their affairs. However, by contending for the American representation, he seems at last driven virtually to admit, that great caution ought to be used in the exercise of all our legislative rights over an object so remote from our eye, and so little connected with our immediate feelings; that in prudence we ought not to be quite so ready with our taxes, until we can secure the desired representation in parliament. Perhaps it may be some time before this hopeful scheme can be brought to perfect maturity; although the author seems to be no wise aware of any obstructions that lie in the way of it.
While Knox, Grenville and Burke were not necessarily opposed in principle to direct colonial representation in Parliament, Grenville nonetheless conjectured that Parliament retained a constitutional right to virtually represent the colonial subjects.
''On the American Taxation''
Burke supported the doctrine of virtual representation in Britain. Yet in his Parliamentary speech of 1774, entitled On American Taxation, Burke responded to the suggestion that America was virtually represented in Parliament by remarking:What! does the electric force of virtual representation more easily pass over the Atlantic than pervade Wales, which lies in your neighborhood? or than Chester and Durham, surrounded by abundance of representation that is actual and palpable? But, Sir, your ancestors thought this sort of virtual representation, however ample, to be totally insufficient for the freedom of the inhabitants of territories that are so near, and comparatively so inconsiderable. How, then, can I think it sufficient for those which are infinitely greater, and infinitely more remote? You will now, Sir, perhaps imagine that I am on the point of proposing to you a scheme for a representation of the colonies in Parliament. Perhaps I might be inclined to entertain some such thought; but a great flood stops me in my course. Opposuit Natura. I cannot remove the eternal barriers of the creation. The thing, in that mode, I do not know to be possible. 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.
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 , whilst they are equal to the common ends of their institution. But in order to enable ... superintendence, her powers must be boundless. The gentlemen who think the powers of Parliament limited may please themselves to talk of requisitions. But suppose the requisitions are not obeyed? What! shall there be no reserved power in the empire, to supply a deficiency which may weaken, divide, and dissipate the whole? 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.' This backwardness was, as I am told, actually the case of Pennsylvania for some short time towards the beginning of the last war, owing to some internal dissensions in that colony. But whether the fact were so or otherwise, the case is equally to be provided for by a competent sovereign power. But then this ought to be no ordinary power, nor ever used in the first instance. This is what I meant, when I have said, at various times, that I consider the power of taxing in Parliament as an instrument of empire, and not as a means of supply.