in this he was historically correct or not, his utterances respecting the effect of such abuse are as pertinent to-day as ever, and in some respects remarkably applicable to the depression that in recent years has come to one great department of the domestic industries of the United States through injudicious taxation of the crude material—wool—that constitutes its foundation:
"The subject's grief
Comes through commissions, which compel from each
The sixth part of his substance, to be levied
Without delay; . . . this makes bold mouths:
Tongues spit their duties out; and it's come to pass,
This tractable obedience is a slave
To each incensed will."
"For, upon these taxations,
The clothiers all, not able to maintain
The many to them 'longing, have put off
The spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers, who,
Unfit for other life, compelled by hunger.
And lack of other means, in desperate manner
Daring the event to the teeth, are all in an uproar.
And Danger serves among them."
The great revolution in England (1642-1659), by which the constitutional rights of her people were finally established, wherein Charles I lost both his crown and his head, was caused by a question of taxation. And subsequently the attempt of Great Britain to tax her American colonies without their consent was also the primary cause of the American Revolution;[1] while later the demonstrated inability of maintaining a harmonious and efficient government under the Articles of Confederation, which per-
- ↑ Recent historical investigations (by Prof. Tyler) have shown that the demand "no taxation without representation," which has been popularly regarded as one of the prime causes that contributed to the revolt of the British American colonies in 1775 and their subsequent independence, "did not mean that the colonies could not be lawfully taxed by Parliament when they had no representatives in Parliament. It was a demand applicable to the three orders of the English body politic king, lords, and commons and meant that the commons could not be taxed when they were not represented. But the commons represented the cities of Leeds, Halifax, Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool in Parliament, although none of them had any vote or personal representation in it at the time of the American revolt or for a long time afterward. Indeed, only one tenth of the people of the United Kingdom had then any vote. The commons represented Massachusetts in the same way that they represented Manchester. That this was an unsatisfactory kind of representation will be admitted without argument, but it was not in contravention of the maxim quoted, which has come down to us as a legal justification for the war. It would have been strange indeed if the English Constitution had contained within itself a justification for breaking up the British Empire." The separation of the colonies from the mother country was therefore not a legal step, but an act of revolution, and suggests a remark attributed to Mr. Lincoln at the outbreak of our civil war, that "it was a constitutional procedure for overthrowing the Constitution."
