Q. If the Parliament should repeal the stamp-act, will the Assembly of Pennsylvania rescind their resolutions?
A. I think not.
Q. Before there was any thought of the stamp-act, did they wish for a representation in Parliament?
A. No.
Q. Don't you know that there is, in the Pennsylvania charter, an express reservation of the right of Parliament to lay taxes there?
A. I know there is a clause in the charter by which the king grants that he will levy no taxes on the inhabitants, unless it be with the consent of the Assembly or by act of Parliament.
Q. How, then, could the Assembly of Pennsylvania assert, that laying a tax on them by the stamp-act was an infringement of their rights?
A. They understand it thus: by the same charter, and otherwise, they are entitled to all the privileges and liberties of Englishmen; they find in the great charters, and the petition and declaration of rights, that one of the privileges of English subjects is, that they are not to be taxed but by their common consent; they have therefore relied upon it, from the first settlement of the province, that the Parliament never would nor could, by colour of that clause in the charter, assume a right of taxing them, till it had qualified itself to exercise such right, by admitting representatives from the people to be taxed, who ought to make a part of that common consent.
Q. Are there any words in the charter that justify that construction?
A. The common rights of Englishmen, as declared by Magna Charta and the Petition of Right, all justify it. * * * *