oubted that Parliament had a right to tax America
without its consent. Customs restrictions were long familiar. As to
internal taxation, why, it was asked, should the colonies have a voice
in Parliament? Birmingham and Manchester, great centres of population,
were not represented, while that uninhabited heap of stones, Old Sarum,
sent a member to the Commons. Resting on these abuses, even Pitt and
Burke were content to argue that taxation of America was just. For them
it was a question whether that right should be exercised.

With the best will in the world to be on good terms with the mother
country, America could not agree in such reasoning. The case had nothing
to do with obligations. As for these, the colonists knew that England
would never have won against the French in Canada without their aid. But
that was not the question. Should those who for a hundred and
thirty-five years had paid no tax to England pay one now? Were the
people who for seventy years had drawn a fine distinction between paying
their governor of their own accord and paying him at the command of the
king, and who in every year of royal governorship had made their
contention plain--were they to be satisfied to pay taxes because
Birmingham did?

Undoubtedly there were other causes for discontent. "To me," says
Sabine, in the preface to his "American Loyalists," "the documentary
history, the state papers of the period teach nothing more clearly than
this, namely, that almost every matter brought into discussion was
practical, and in some form or other related to LABOR, to some branch
of COMMON INDUSTRY." He reminds us that twenty-nine laws limited
industry in the colonies, and concludes that "the great object of the
Revolution was to release LABOR from these restrictions." Undoubtedly
these restrictive laws had their effect upon the temper of the people.
Undoubtedly also there was much fear lest there should be established in
the colonies a bureaucracy of major and minor officials, corruptly, as
in England, winning fortunes for themselves. Yet the question of
taxation, a matter of merely theoretical submission, which produced no
hardship and would not impoverish the country, was the main cause of
trouble. The two branches of the race had long unconsciously parted
their ways, and the realization of it was upon them.

Upon the proposal of the Stamp Act the colonies did everything in their
power to prevent the passage of the bill. They urged that int