Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/217

 CH. XVII.] the legislature." And they contended, that "there is a vast difference between the exercise of parliamentary jurisdiction in general acts for the amendment of the common law, or even in general regulations of trade and commerce through the empire, and the actual exercise of that jurisdiction in levying external and internal duties and taxes on the colonists, while they neither are, nor can be represented in parliament." And in the petition of the same body to the house of commons, there is the following declaration: "We most sincerely recognise our allegiance to the crown, and acknowledge all due subordination to the parliament of Great Britain, and shall always retain the most grateful sense of their assistance and protection." But it is added, there is "a material distinction in reason and sound policy between the necessary exercise of parliamentary jurisdiction in general acts for the amendment of the common law, and the regulation of trade and commerce, through the whole empire; and the exercise of that jurisdiction by imposing taxes on the colonies;" thus admitting the former to be rightful, while denying the latter.

§ 192. But after the passage of the stamp act, in 1765, many of the colonies began to examine this subject with more care and to entertain very different opinions, as to parliamentary authority. The doctrines maintained in debate in parliament, as well as the alarming extent, to which a practical application of those doctrines might lead, in drying up the resources, and VOL. I.