en legislation and
taxation is essentially necessary to liberty."

Mr. Pitt had no claim to be considered as a great authority in the
principles of constitutional law. George II., slight as was his
political knowledge or wisdom, complained on one occasion of the
ignorance of a Secretary of State who had never read Vattel; and in this
very debate he even boasted of his ignorance of "law-cases and acts of
Parliament." But his coadjutor in the House of Lords (Lord Camden, at
this time Chief-justice of the Common Pleas) owed the chief part of the
respect in which he was held to his supposed excellence as a
constitutional lawyer, and he fully endorsed and expanded Pitt's
arguments when the bill came up to the House of Lords. He affirmed that
he spoke as "the defender of the law and the constitution; that, as the
affair was of the greatest consequence, and in its consequences might
involve the fate of kingdoms, he had taken the strictest review of his
arguments, he had examined and re-examined all his authorities; and that
his searches had more and more convinced him that the British Parliament
had no right to tax the Americans. The Stamp Act was absolutely illegal,
contrary to the fundamental laws of nature, contrary to the fundamental
laws of this constitution--a constitution governed on the eternal and
immutable laws of nature. The doctrine which he was asserting was not
new; it was as old as the constitution; it grew up with it; indeed, it
was its support. Taxation and representation are inseparably united. God
hath joined them; no British government can put them asunder. To
endeavor to do so is to stab our very vitals." And he objected to the
first clause (that which declared the power and right to tax), on the
ground that if the ministers "wantonly pressed this declaration,
although they were now repealing the Stamp Act, they might pass it again
in a month." He even argued that "they must have future taxation in
view, or they would hardly assert their right to enjoy the pleasure of
offering an insult." He was answered by Lord Northington (the
Chancellor) and by Lord Mansfield (the Chief-justice), both of whom
supported the motion to repeal the tax, but who also agreed in denying
the soundness of his doctrine that, as far as the power was concerned,
there was any distinction between a law to tax and a law for any other
purpose; and Lord Mansfield farther denied the validity of the argument
which it had been attempted to