CHAPTER 12
TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION
George III.
George Grenville.
The British Parliament.
107. George III and George Grenville.--George III became king in 1760. He was a narrow, stupid, well-meaning, ignorant young man of twenty-one. He soon found in George Grenville a narrow, dull, well-meaning lawyer, a man who would do what he was told. So George Grenville became the head of the government. To him the law was the law. If he wished to do a thing and could find the law for it, he asked for nothing more. His military advisers told him that an army must be kept in America for years. It was Grenville's business to find the money to support this army. Great Britain was burdened with a national debt. The army was to be maintained, partly, at least, for the protection of the colonists. Why should they not pay a part of the cost of maintaining it? Parliament was the supreme power in the British Empire. It controlled the king, the church, the army, and the navy. Surely a Parliament that had all this power could tax the colonists. At all events, Grenville thought it could, and Parliament passed the Stamp Act to tax them.
Taxation and representation.
Henry's resolutions, 1765. Higginson, 161-164; McMaster, 112-114.
108. Henry's Resolutions, 1765.--The colonists, however, with one voice, declared that Parliament had no power to tax them. Taxes, they said, could be voted only by themselves or their representatives. They were represented in their own colonial assemblies, and nowhere else. Patrick Henry was now a member of the Virginia assembly. He had just been elected for the first time. But as none of the older members of the assembly proposed any action, Henry tore a leaf from an old law-book and wrote on it a set of resolutions. These he presented in a burning speech, upholding the rights of the Virginians. He said that to tax them by act of Parliament was tyranny. "Caesar and Tarquin had each his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and George III"--"Treason, treason," shouted the speaker. "May profit by their example," slowly Henry went on. "If that be treason, make the most of it." The resolutions were voted. In them the Virginians declared that they were not subject to Acts of Parliament laying taxes or interfering in the internal affairs of Virginia.
HENRY'S FIRST AND LAST RESOLUTIONS (FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL DRAFT).
Opposition to the Stamp Act, 1765. Higginson, 164-165; McMaster, 116.