No Taxation Without Representation
Virtual Representation Rejected; Radicals See Cause for Revolution
Most historians agree that Britain’s victory in the Seven Years War was the catalyst for the series of events that culminated in American Independence. At this point opinions diverge. A chronological look at political events immediately following this war will offer a practical train of thought. The Domino effect began with the Writs of Assistance. This heavy-handed method of dealing with the effect smuggling had on the royal coffers was a political and practical failure.
American Colonists had exercised their economic freedom too long to voluntarily submit to the enforcement of these laws. Virtual representation was the idea that Members of Parliament representated the empire, not just their local constituents. Radicals like the Sons of Liberty in Boston saw this was the flimsey excuse the government used to justify taxation without representatrion
The Proclamation Line of 1763
The strategy that King George, with Lord Bute whispering in his ear, cooked up to convince the colonists that they needed protection was represented by a piece of legislation called The Proclamation Line of 1763. This law was just part of an entire package called, offidially, The Proclamation of 1763. It was put into effect to appease the Indian population by giving them all of the land west of the peaks of the Appalachian Mountains. This act would provide a plausible need for a standing army to enforce this line and to “protect” the colonists from Indian reprisal. It was thought that the American subjects of the King could not help but be thankful for their monarch’s care. This was a thinly-veiled political smoke screen which fooled no American. They knew that this Royal presence was only meant to enforce and collect Customs. This act made radicals out of several wealthy Virginia planters who had procured land grants in the Ohio country.
The Quartering Act of 1765
When the proclamation line failed to establish either the fear or respect needed to motivate the colonies to accept or pay for the continued presence of the army, King George ignored their unwillingness to appreciate an army’s presence and instead focused on finding a more palliative way to finance it. The result was the Stamp Act. As odious as we know this economic act to be the wildly foolish follow up was the immediate passage of “The Quartering Act” which forced the Colonies to billet the standing army. This especially offended the colonists who had no trouble appreciating the irony of the fact that the army that was supposed to police the Appalachian frontier was stationed in coastal cities. It also naturally followed that it would sir up the Puritans of New England who had a historical aversion to the tyranny of a Monarch’s standing army. The Sons of Liberty in New York took special exception to this one as they were the one's who had to initially foot the bill.
The Quebec Act of 1774
This legislation offended many economic and religious priorities of the colonists all at once. It was the naïvely disastrous result of trying to legislate for 3 million unrepresented people living 3000 miles across the Atlantic. It was to be that last political straw in almost every region of the colonies. Religiously it offended the reformation minded Puritans in the northeast and the Scots-Presbyterians in Appalachia by giving religious freedoms to the French-speaking Catholics in Canada. Economically it offended the Virginian Elite by granting the Ohio Valley, which many of them had already heavily invested in, to the colony of Quebec. The Quebec Act was also the catalyst that united the rest of the colonies behind the rebel hotbed of New England by confirming that Parliament would not hesitate to invoke economic penalties similar to the Boston Port Act which they used to punish the coordinators of the Boston Tea Party.
Sources
A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic by John Ferling, 2003, Oxford University Press
The Spirit of Seventy-Six, edited by Henry S. Commager and Richard Morris, 2002, Castle Books
The Glorious Cause by Robert Middlekauff, 2005, Oxford University Press
