Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/213

 CH. XVII.] from any acknowledgment of such authority, except so far as their necessities, from time to time, compelled them to acquiesce in the parliamentary measures expressly extending to them. We have already seen, that they resisted the imposition of taxes upon them, without the consent of their local legislatures, from a very early period.

§ 188. But it was by no means an uncommon opinion in some of the colonies, especially in the proprietary and charter governments, that no act of parliament whatsoever could bind them without their own consent An extreme reluctance was shown by Massachusetts to any parliamentary interference as early as 1640; and the famous navigation acts of 1651 and 1660 were perpetually evaded, even when their authority was no longer denied, throughout the whole of New-England. Massachusetts, in 1679, in an address to the crown, declared, that she "apprehended them to be an invasion of the rights, liberties, and properties of the subjects of his majesty in the colony, they not being represented in parliament; and, according to the usual sayings of the learned in the law, the laws of England were bounded within the four seas, and did not reach America." However, Massachusetts, as well as the other New-England colonies, finally acquiesced in the authority of parliament to regulate trade and commerce; but denied it in regard to taxation and internal regulation of the