HALVDAN KOHT. [No. 3. 



complain openly of such restrictions of the smuggling traffic; 

 they found, however, a ground for protesting against the new 

 Sugar Act in the fact that it plainly announced as its purpose 

 to provide a revenue for the British treasury. 



It was, indeed, a financial need that compelled the Govern- 

 ment to try to prevent smuggling, and just the same need led 

 them to impose the stamp duty. The war with France had 

 doubled the debt of the Empire and had increased the amount 

 of taxation in England by millions in the year. The war was, 

 in part, carried on in the direct interest of the American colonies, 

 and it could not seem in any way unreasonable to shift part of 

 the burden on to them. 



As a weapon against the Stamp Act the Americans invented 

 the well known theory of external and internal taxes: they were 

 willing to pay such taxes as incidentally came out of the regu- 

 lation of commerce, but they would not be taxed for revenue. 

 The difference was a purely artificial one, equally untenable 

 from the point of view of practical administration and from a 

 legal point of view. Nor was it maintained in the contest about 

 the Sugar Act of 1764, still less in the conflicts about taxation 

 after the repeal of the stamp duty. 



The inherent logic of the circumstances forced the Ameri- 

 cans to extend their demands uritil they aimed at nothing less 

 than liberation from all taxation without their own consent. 

 Indeed, since the power of taxation was only a part of the 

 legislative power of the British Parliament, the consequence would 

 necessarily be: no legislation without representation! 



Such a demand was in its very root a revolutionary one. 

 It was not the Americans solely who were without any repre- 

 sentation in the British Parliament; by far the greater part of 

 the British nation in England herself did not exercise even the 

 slightest degree of influence upon parliamentary elections. When 

 John Hampden, of revolutionary farne, refused to pay the ship- 

 money imposed by the royal will upon the whole country, he 

 did not do so because he had not, directly or. through his repre- 

 sentative, tåken any part himself in the tax, but because the 



