Remembering My Country (I)

The principal dispute regarding taxation between the American colonies and Britain was the specific authority to level particular taxes. The colonial Assemblies asserted that Parliament only had authority over external taxes. That is control over trade matters. Their position was that parliament had no authority over taxing internal interactions among the Colonies. The Assemblies had sole authority in those areas and the sole right to tax. This was the crux of the American argument regarding no taxation without representation.

Parliament argued that the Colonies had "virtual representaion" in Parliament because it represented the the interests of the entire empire. Eventually, the Colonists argued that the legality of any tax lay in its intention not its ostensible purpose. Therefore, a tax upon exports that had a hidden purpose of raising revenue and not simply regulating external trade was an unconstitutional tax based on the ancient unwritten English constitution. Great Britain as a sovereign nation had the right to regulate trade. But She did not have the right to levee taxes upon a people that had no say in their implementation.

Many Colonists, including Benjamin Franklin, came to the conclusion that the distinction between external and internal taxation had become indeterminant and therefore Parliament had no authority to pass any laws for the Colonies.