Wesley Corpus

In order to determine this, let us consider the nature of our colonies. An English colony is, a number of persons to whom the King grants a charter, permitting them to settle in some far country as a corporation, enjoying such powers as the charter grants, to be administered in such a manner as the charter prescribes. As a corporation they make laws for themselves; but as a corporation subsisting by a grant from higher authority, to the control of that authority they still continue subject. Considering this, nothing can be more plain, than that the supreme power in England has a legal right of laying any tax upon them for any end beneficial to the whole empire. 2. But you object, “It is the privilege of a freeman and an Englishman to be taxed only by his own consent. And this consent is given for every man by his representatives in Parliament. But we have no representatives in Parliament. Therefore we ought not to be taxed thereby.” I answer, This argument proves too much. If the Parlia ment cannot tax you because you have no representation therein, for the same reason it can make no laws to bind you. If a freeman cannot be taxed without his own consent, neither can he be punished without it; for whatever holds with regard to taxation, holds with regard to all other laws. Therefore he who denies the English Parliament the power of taxation, denies it the right of making any laws at all. But this power over the colonies you have never disputed; you have always admitted statutes for the punishment of offences, and for the preventing or redressing of inconveniences; and the reception of any law draws after it, by a chain which cannot be broken, the necessity of admitting taxation. 3. But I object to the very foundation of your plea: That “every freeman is governed by laws to which he has consented:” As confidently as it has been asserted, it is absolutely false. In wide-extended dominions, a very small part of the people are concerned in making laws. This, as all public business, must be done by delegation; the delegates are chosen by a select number. And those that are not electors, who are far the greater part, stand by, idle and helpless spectators. The case of electors is little better.