Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/192

 152 septennial parliaments of the parent country, which was a measure so offensive to the people, that it constituted one of their grievances propounded at the commencement of the American Revolution.

§ 168. For all the purposes of domestic and internal regulation, the colonial legislatures deemed themselves possessed of entire and exclusive authority. One of the earliest forms, in which the spirit of the people exhibited itself on this subject, was the constant denial of all power of taxation, except under laws passed by themselves. The propriety of their resistance of the claim of the Crown to tax them seems not to have been denied by the most strenuous of their opponents. It was the object of the latter to subject them only to the undefined and arbitrary power of taxation by Parliament. The colonists with a firmness and public spirit, which strike us with surprise and admiration, claimed for themselves, and their posterity, a total exemption from all taxation not imposed by their own representatives. A declaration to this effect will be found in some of the earliest of colonial legislation; in that of Plymouth, of Massachusetts, of Virginia, of Maryland, of Rhode-Island, of New-York, and indeed of most of the other colonies. The general opinion held by them was, that parliament had no authority to tax them, because they were not represented in parliament.

§ 169. On the other hand, the statute of 6 Geo. 3, ch. 12, contained an express declaration by parliament, that