3.3 Taxation Without Representation

Colonists did not elect anyone to Parliament. They argued that, as British subjects, they could be taxed only by representatives they chose, meaning their colonial assemblies. The slogan 'no taxation without representation' summed this up.

British leaders answered with virtual representation, the idea that every member of Parliament represented the interests of the whole empire, including colonists who did not vote, just as many people in Britain could not vote. Colonists rejected this and insisted on actual representation by people they elected.

• Sugar Act (1764): actually lowered the tax on foreign molasses, but Britain now enforced it, and smugglers were tried in vice-admiralty courts without juries.
• Stamp Act (1765): a direct tax on printed materials such as newspapers, legal documents and playing cards. It hit lawyers, printers and merchants, people able to organize protest. The Stamp Act Congress (nine colonies, October 1765) petitioned against it, the Sons of Liberty forced stamp distributors to resign, and merchants boycotted British goods. Parliament repealed it in 1766.
• Declaratory Act (1766): passed the same day as the repeal, it claimed Parliament could make laws for the colonies 'in all cases whatsoever'.
• Townshend Acts (1767): taxes on imported glass, lead, paint, paper and tea, with the money used to pay royal officials so they would not depend on colonial assemblies. John Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania argued Parliament could regulate trade but not tax for revenue. The Daughters of Liberty organized spinning bees to make homespun cloth so families could boycott British goods.
• Boston Massacre (March 5, 1770): British soldiers fired into a crowd in Boston, killing five people. Paul Revere's engraving turned it into propaganda, while John Adams defended the soldiers in court. Parliament repealed the Townshend duties in 1770 except the tax on tea.

Committees of correspondence, begun in Boston in 1772, let towns and then colonies share news and coordinate resistance. The Tea Act (1773) let the struggling British East India Company sell tea directly to the colonies at a low price, though the Townshend tax remained. Colonists saw it as a trick to make them accept the tax. On December 16, 1773, men disguised as Mohawk Indians dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor: the Boston Tea Party.

Parliament struck back with the Coercive Acts (1774), which colonists called the Intolerable Acts. They closed Boston's port until the tea was paid for, put Massachusetts's government under tighter royal control, let royal officials accused of crimes be tried elsewhere and expanded the quartering of soldiers. Instead of isolating Massachusetts, the acts united the colonies behind it.

Twelve colonies sent delegates to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in September 1774. It agreed on a sweeping boycott of British goods and endorsed the Suffolk Resolves, which urged colonists to arm and train their militias. In April 1775 British troops marching to seize weapons at Concord clashed with militia at Lexington and Concord, and the war began.