-term solution created long-term confusion.[22]

[22] ibid., 327-352.

Nevertheless, repeal was achieved and a collective sigh of relief was
heard in London and in the colonies. The colonists rejoiced in their
victory. A few men like George Mason read the Declaratory Act and the
debates carefully and concluded that the act did not disavow
parliament's taxing power. Until a specific disclaimer was included,
the problem was not solved. Mason was particularly defiant and
sarcastic about the claims by London merchants that they had been able
to gain repeal only by promising good behavior from the colonies in the
future and warning the Virginians not to challenge parliament again. In
his reply Mason mockingly declared:

The epithets of parent and child have been so long applied to Great
Britain and her colonies, that ... we rarely see anything from your
side of the water free from the authoritative style of a master to
a schoolboy:

"We have with infinite difficulty and fatigue got you excused this
one time; pray be a good boy for the future, do what your papa and
mama bid you, and hasten to return them your most grateful
acknowledgements for condescending to let you keep what is your own
... and if you should at any time hereafter happen to transgress,
your friends will all beg for you and be security for your good
behaviour; but if your are a naughty boy,... then everybody will
hate you, and say you are a graceless and undutiful child; your
parents and masters will be obliged to whip you severely...."[23]

[23] Robert A. Rutland, ed., Papers of George Mason, 3 vols.
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1970), I, 65-73.

One other Virginian did not rest until he had challenged the notion,
much discussed in parliament by commons member Soame Jenyns, that the
colonists, like all British citizens, were "virtually" represented in
parliament. To Richard Bland nothing could be more vital to the rights
of British subjects than to be represented "directly" by those whom
they knew and whom they chose to represent them. In March 1766 he
published his magnificent defense of Virginia rights, An Inquiry
into the Rights of the British Colonies. He would not concede to
parliament the notion that the colonies and colonists were represented
"virtually" in that body just as the nine out of ten Englishmen were
who did not have the vote, or because members of commons were elected
from