Wesley Corpus

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. When they are near equally divided, in the choice of their delegates to represent them in the Parliament or National Assembly, almost half of them must be governed, not only without, but even against, their own consent. And how has any man consented to those laws which were made before he was born? Our consent to these, may, and to the laws now made even in England, is purely passive. And in every place, as all men are born the subjects of some state or other, so they are born, passively, as it were, consenting to the laws of that state. Any other than this kind of consent, the condition of civil life does not allow. 4.