Concept thread · Economy

taxation without consent

The principle that taxes are a free gift of the people, to be levied only by their own representatives — the imperial crisis's central charge, running from the Petition of Right's forced loans through the Stamp Act quarrel to the Declaration's shortest grievance.

The thread

1. 1775 · grievesoverturned
   The whig line is drawn at the purse: the moment Parliament reaches past trade regulation to take American money without an American grant, the duty of obedience ends.
   ⚖ Adams complains of nothing here — he concedes it is the colonists' "interest and duty" to stay subject to Parliament "in the regulation of our trade," then states the terms on which that obedience continues: only while they govern their internal policy and "give and grant our own money, and no longer." Unlike the Declaration's true grievance of "imposing Taxes on us without our Consent," no act is named and no injury lamented; Adams is answering Massachusettensis's claim that it is "equally our duty to remain subject to the authority of parliament" by arguing for the principle that the colonists' money can be taken only as their own free gift. Notice too that he draws the line in two places, not one: the purse, but also internal self-government.
   Novanglus →
2. 1776 · rebutsupheld
   No new power was assumed in taxing America and no unfair proportion exacted, Lind answers, so the complaint was only the bare possibility of future oppression — a grievance existing in imagination only.
   ⚖ Lind's move is subtler than flat contradiction: he admits the literal fact — "their consent was not asked then more than now," nor ever in earlier reigns — while denying that the fact is an injury, arguing in the very paragraph this quotation closes that no "new power was assumed in taxing them," the sums were moderate, and the money went to maintaining "Government in America." So his answer to the tax charge works by draining it of grievance rather than denying its words: if nothing new, excessive, or unfair was done, all that remains is fear of what taxation might one day become — "a grievance," as he concludes, that "existed in imagination only."
   An Answer to the Declaration →
3. 1776 · grievesnuanced
   The shortest charge carries the central quarrel: a tax laid by a legislature in which the taxed have no representative is not a grant of the people's money but a taking of it.
   ⚖ Notice the word the Declaration actually uses: taxes imposed "without our Consent" — not "without representation." By 1776 the colonists no longer wanted seats in Parliament; this charge sits under the accusation that the King had joined "a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution" in passing "Acts of pretended Legislation," so only their own assemblies — not a reformed Westminster — could grant their money. The eight words do not argue the old doctrine that taxes are the people's free gift to be given by their own hand; they take it as settled and simply record its violation among the "Facts... submitted to a candid world."
   Declaration of Independence →
4. 1776 · rebutsnuanced
   The tax grievance comes last and slightest, he notes, because its authors privately owned they chose taxes as the subject most alarming to the people, finding no constitutional fundamental that makes representation more necessary for taxes than for any other act.
   ⚖ Hutchinson concedes the fact — Parliament did tax without colonial consent — and attacks the grievance's sincerity instead: its authors, he claims, privately "pitched upon this subject of taxes, because it was most alarming to the people," while owning they "could find no fundamentals in the English Constitution" making representation more necessary for taxes than for any other act. Because the Declaration pleads taxes among the "causes which have impelled... separation," exposing it as a pretext chosen for alarm value still answers the charge as pleaded, so the reply stands. One repair: he wrote that the grievance "comes in late, and in as slight a manner as is possible," not "last" — in the Declaration several grievances follow it.
   Strictures upon the Declaration →

Related threads

Threads argued alongside this one, or that answer it.

• the supremacy of Parliamentrebuts · argued together
• consent of the governedargued together
• limited governmentargued together
• free electionsargued together
• judicial independenceargued together
• natural rightsargued together
• standing armiesargued together
• the law of the landargued together
• quarteringargued together
• trial by juryargued together

A thread read top to bottom is the spine of a paper: trigger → grievance → rebuttal → remedy → interpretation. See it in time on the timeline, or browse all concepts.