The question of Parliament’s right to tax America is the most important that has ever been debated in Britain, because it raises the issue of supreme authority and therefore of Britain’s existence as a state. Although I support the rights of government, I blame the administration for the way in which American claims have been advanced; “I cannot help considering those claims, and the indecent manner in which they have been urged, as something very much to their disadvantage.” Once the government is attacked, it must be defended by every one who supports the empire, “the prosperity, the very existence of which depend upon the union of all its parts under one head.”

Almost any calamity in a nation will be advantageous to some one in it. Caesar, who preferred to be first in a village to being second in Rome, would doubtless have reduced Rome to a village rather than let another be superior to him there. I am not addressing my arguments to such ambitious men.

 The principle is frequently advanced that all men in their natural state are free and independent, but in practice this is untrue. “No history of the past, no observation of the present time, can be brought to countenance such a natural state.” The principle of an equal right to liberty, which is inseparable from an equal right to property, has never in fact been acknowledged by any but the lowest classes, who use it to cut the throats and seize the goods of their betters.

From the principle, nevertheless, has been derived the conclusion that government exists by virtue of a social contract, whereby each individual surrenders a portion of his natural independence in order to form a sovereign power for the protection of all. But, because “no such state of independence was ever known to exist,” the social contract is equally mythical. If the legality of a government depended on contract, there never was a legal government. “Such are the idle dreams of metaphysicians.”

The rights of government derive, not from a voluntary human contract, but from human weakness and necessities. A solitary individual flies for protection to whoever is strong enough to provide it, and offers that person his service in return for security. This is the true social contract, a relation of weaker and stronger. Society is composed of the ruling and the ruled, “all equality and independence being by the law of nature strictly forbidden: and it is farther declared by the same authority, that whosoever is not able to command, nor willing to obey, shall forfeit his living or his life.”

The relationship of master and servant clearly has natural and divine sanction; what is not so clear is the limits of the master’s right. The whole basis of my argument is “that the sole determination of that right rests with the superior; because, if that is not allowed, it cannot under God reside any where; and so the union, which we suppose so necessary in society,… must of course be dissolved.”

Any viable society, then, is divided into two parts, of which the governing is “always the least numerous” and acts as a single mind. This is the ruling power, “whose will…must be allowed the measure of its own rights, and of those of its subjects.” Such a power has no right to do wrong, but it alone can determine right and wrong; and against it private judgment has no standing. Conflicts between individuals may be left to ordinary judges, but in whatever concerns the safety of the whole “the governing part must, of necessity, be both judge and party.” This is the price of having government.

Natural rights and natural laws are the framework within which the ruler must legislate. Any act of power that is unnecessary, or that does not promote the safety of the whole, is a breach of the natural compact between ruler and ruled. Sacrifices made in war, even when pointless, do not impair that compact; yet “the smallest injury done by Government to the meanest peasant, where no necessity of state can be rationally alledged, is sufficient to throw the whole into confusion.”

 God seems to have said to those in authority, take power and use it for the good of all. “‘The task I impose is difficult,…and you will commit many errors in the performance of it: but go on boldly, be not discouraged, for none of those errors shall be imputed to you as crimes, if you can forgive yourself, all men shall forgive you.’” Power must be used only for maintaining authority and preserving order; use for any other purpose will be punished.

 “From an inattention to these great commands have arisen all the disorders and revolutions in government with which history acquaints us.” Forcing men to profess religious opinions, for instance, that were contrary to their consciences “could never be supposed by any but ideots, necessary for the support of government.” Yet we all know what happened to the Spaniards when they tried this in the Low Countries, or to the Stuarts in Britain.

If you ask who has the right to judge which acts of power are or are not contrary to nature, “I answer, no body. The immediate impulse of every man’s feel-ings stands in the stead of all judgment in such cases.” For men rise together against the government, and it falls.

What do these laws of nature have to do with the controversy between Britain and America? The original compact, it is alleged, has been broken; but when and how? By our being taxed without our consent, say the Americans, which is contrary to the law of nature. “When you ask them to quote the page; or shew them some law of nature which speaks the very reverse, it is then by the constitution of Britain. There when they are shewn that the solemn declarations of the legislature, and the constant practice,… speak against them, they declare themselves against all those solemn declarations and practices, telling us, that what has been done, if wrongfully done, confers no right to repeat it, and back again they go to their laws of nature, or to the flimsy hypothesis of some scholastic writer to new-model nature and the constitution of England.…”

What is the nature of the taxing power, and does it differ, as the Americans contend, from other forms of legislation? Not all subjects can be employed in the public service, but all should contribute to the support of those who are. A tax is itself a form of service, and such a vital one that only the supreme power may determine it. A subject who determines his own service is no longer a subject. The English people have no right of consent to taxation: once they elect a House of Commons, they surrender to it the absolute control of their purse strings. If their confidence is abused, it is true, they may oust their representatives at the end of seven years; but this has nothing to do with the freedom of the Commons to do as it pleases while it holds power. Although its composition may change with elections, its right as part of the government is perpetual. A manifestation of this right is the Parliamentary rule that with a money bill, unlike almost any other form of legislation, a petition against it is not admitted while the bill is under consideration.

To show “the frivolousness of the vulgar notion that the people of England keep the possession of their own purses, and give their consent to their own taxation by their representatives,” suppose that the Commons, Lords, and even the King were elected every seven years by all the men of England: still “they would be taxed without their own consent, as much as if they lived under the great Turk.…This supposed representation, even with regard to the House of Commons, is very far from being true, and…the word Virtual, which has been clapped in, to supply this defect, has no meaning at all.” The history of the evolution of Parliament proves that an elected member represents only his own constituency. He votes, however, to tax people all over the country who had no part in choosing him; “yet it never came into any bodies head to fancy that the money levied from them for the publick service, was illegally and unconstitutionally levied.”

Freeholders either sat or were represented in Parliament because they were powerful. When they lost their power through becoming impoverished, they lost their vote: the act of 8 Henry VI limited the franchise to those among them who possessed at least 40 shillings a year, on the ground that elections would otherwise become dangerously tumultuous.

This act was intended to stabilize the constitution by halting the increase in the number of voters. The intention has been thwarted, however, by the changing value of money. There are now ten 40-shilling freeholders for one in the time of Henry VI. “But although these are legal voters by the letter of the law, they are not so by the spirit of the ancient constitution, which plainly intended to lop off nine out of ten of them.…” In addition there are “the labourers, the farmers, and even the copy-holders of land, who have no vote in chusing those who impose taxes on them.”

Virtual representation, as a principle of government, means that those elected, whatever their number, represent the whole. But suppose that all the land is held by a single freeholder, as in Turkey. “Then is the Grand Signor virtual representative of all the people of Turkey, their universal knight of the shire, and, in a most parliamentary manner, levies what taxes he pleases upon them, by their own consent.”

I have begun by showing that the idea of a people’s consenting to be taxed “is contrary to the nature of government, and unsupported by any fact. I have been at pains to shew that the notion of the legislative power acting by virtue of representation, is no principle in the British constitution; and I have finished by shewing that the words virtual representation, either mean nothing at all, or mean a great deal more than those who use them would be willing to admit: and yet, after all my pains, my American antagonists are as much out of my reach as before.”

Their claiming the right of Englishmen to be taxed by their own consent misled me into thinking that they wanted to be represented in Parliament. They say instead that each colony has a parliament, which alone has the power of raising money. The question at issue, for all its importance, is so simple as to be “within the compass of a plain and sound understanding. The principles upon which it is to be discussed are universal, comprehensive, and applicable to every possible case; and every opposition to them is immediately reducible to a falsity in point of fact, or an absurdity in point of reasoning.” The only difficulty in applying them arises from the Americans’ inability or unwillingness to say what they want. First they apparently want the rights of British subjects; then “they refuse to be taxed like other British Subjects, and each colony requires a parliament of its own. “At one time they acknowledge their subjection to Great Britain; and almost in the same breath, endeavour to prove that each petty colony has a right to be her equal. One moment they bar all considera-tions of force…in deciding the rights of sovereigns and subjects, and the next endeavour to establish what they call their rights by a variety of outrages, such as were never imputed to any established government of the most arbitrary kind. At one time an American claims the rights of an Englishman; if these are not sufficient, he drops them, and claims the rights of an Irishman; and, when these do not fully answer his purpose, he expects to be put upon the footing of a Hanoverian.…

“First they try to found the extraordinary privileges they claim upon birth-right; but when they are shewn that by birth they had no right to desert their native country, they drop the birthright, and bring forth their charters. When they are shewn that these charters are no other than what are given to every common corporation and trading company, they then cease to be charters and become all at once compacts. At one time it is the love of liberty that made them take shelter in those distant climes, from the tyranny of prerogative; yet when we ask them with whom they made those compacts just mentioned, they tell us, with a King James or a King Charles. How must the great shades of Algernon Sidney and John Lock exclaim, how must they rage…to hear that there should be Englishmen who pretend to read and admire their writings, and yet understand them so little as to own that they had entered into a compact, or as these patriots would call it, a conspiracy, with a King, in order to obtain a dispensation from the laws of the land, and the authority of parliament!

 The assertion that these charters are not charters, but Pacta conventa, is brim-full of absurdity. For, passing over the manifest illegality already hinted, of one part of the sovereign power dispensing with the authority of the whole; the whole sovereign power could not, by the nature of things, enter into any indefeasible compact of that sort.” For sovereignty by its nature has no degrees but is always supreme, and cannot be destroyed, whereas a compact is between independent sovereignties. If such a compact is to be anything more than a treaty, to be observed only as long as it suits the convenience of both parties, the agreement itself must recognize some superior power that will enforce its terms and amend them as the need arises. Otherwise, “in case of any misunderstanding, there lies no appeal but to the God of battles, whose decision only suspends the suit till a future term, when the party that was cast may find the means of entering a new action.” The classic example of such a superior power is in the Act of Union between England and Scotland. In “this solemn paction” one article empowers the new British Parliament to interpret all the other articles of the union so created. In 1725 many Scots objected to a newly enacted tax on malt as an unconstitutional exercise of Parliament’s authority, and rioted against the tax-collectors and those who had supported the act. The government recognized that the dignity of Parliament required obedience. “There were sent to Glasgow, where the pretended standard of liberty was set up, some companies of foot, and some troops of dragoons,” who soon brought the rioters to understand the rights of the legislature. This the Americans will call “club law,…but there never was a question of supremacy decided by any other sort of law.” Force and law are inseparable. “Is it to argument or club law, to which the respectable populace of Boston and Rhode-island trust the justice of their cause? Is it argument to demolish the houses or destroy the goods of those who differ from them in opinion; or is it argument to carry them to the tree of liberty, and there oblige them to take God to witness to sentiments not their own, for fear of being immediately put to death? These are outrages which none but the most ignorant and dis-tempered imaginations could ever dread from any kind of established government, and yet are committed by those, who…complain of cruel and arbitrary exertions of power in the mild government of Great Britain, under the most just and humane of Kings.”

I have used the word “colony” in conformance with present usage. But falsehood is promoted by “the admission of improper terms,” which in this case has led to an analogue with Greek colonies, “which, indeed, had little other relation to their mother-country, than a sort of cousinship.” In fact the American provinces “are not properly colonies either in word or deed. Their most ancient name is plantations, and they have always been, in fact, provinces, governed by a lieutenant or governor, sent by the King.…” The inhabitants are entitled to their rights, not by virtue of descent, but from “their being faithful subjects of Great Britain; since the same advantages are by law expressly communicated to such of them as were born in Westphalia and the Palatinate, and who never set foot upon British ground till they meet with it on the other side of the Atlantic.” The Americans prefer “colony” to any other term because it gives them a degree of independence. But, whatever name is used, “the plain truth is, that those countries…are, from their nature and situation, only subordinate parts in the empire of Britain, and such they would necessarily continue…under some other powerful European state, in case their…tie, with what they are still pleased to call their Mother Country, should happen to be dissolved.”

The separation of Britain and her “American appertinencies” would destroy the prosperity and liberty of both. Until “New England is strong enough to protect Old England, and the seat of the British empire is transferred from London to Boston, there is an absolute necessity that the right of giving law to America should continue to be vested in Great Britain. That it is the interest of Great Britain to protect and cherish her American provinces instead of oppressing them, is an undeniable truth; and it is, perhaps, no less true, that some farther attention, and some farther means of communication, are still wanting to that desirable end: but let every true friend to Britain and to all her connexions stand forth in defence of her great legislative uncountroulable power, without which no union, and of course no safety, can be expected.”