
OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 179 
grew up during the Wars of the Roses and was with 
difficulty suppressed in the seventeenth century. No 
Englishman could stand up and deny the principle of 
“no taxation without representation” without incur- 
ring the risk of being promptly refuted. Neverthe- 
less the unreformed House of Commons had by slow 
stages arrived at a point where its very existence was 
a living denial of that principle. It was therefore im- 
possible to separate the American case from the case 
of Parliamentary Reform; the very language in which 
the argument for Massachusetts and Virginia was 
couched involved also the argument for Birmingham 
and Manchester. Hence in the Stamp Act debate 
the Old Whigs, who were opposed to Parliamentary 
Reform, did not dare to adopt Pitt’s position. That 
would have been suicidal; so they were obliged to 
urge the repeal of the Stamp Act simply upon grounds 
of general expediency. 
The Old Whigs were opposed to reform because 
they felt that they needed the rotten boroughs in 
order to maintain control of Parliament. The king 
was opposed to reform for much the same reason. 
His schemes were based upon the hope of beating the 
Old Whigs at their own game, and securing by fair 
means or foul enough rotten boroughs to control Par- 
liament for his own purposes. In this policy he had 
for a time much success. The reform of Parliament 
would be the death-blow to all such schemes. The 
king felt that it would be the ruin of all his political 
hopes; and this well-grounded fear possessed his half- 
crazy mind with all the overmastering force of a 
morbid fixed idea. Hence his ferocious hatred of the 
elder Pitt, and hence the savage temper in which after 
