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What did colonists mean by “taxation without representation”?

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American Revolution *The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis* (at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781), oil on canvas by John Trumbull, completed in 1820; in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, Washington, D.C. The painting captures the moment when major fighting during the American Revolution ended and the colonies achieved independence.

The phrase “taxation without representation” served as a rallying cry for American colonists who believed that, as English subjects, they possessed a fundamental constitutional right to be taxed only by their own consent.12

For over a century, colonists had exercised this right through their own representative assemblies. When the British Parliament began imposing direct taxes—such as the Stamp Act of 1765—to raise revenue, the colonists argued that these measures were unconstitutional because they had no elected representatives in Parliament to voice their consent or protect their interests.13

Colonists maintained that no freeman should be subject to taxes to which he had not agreed, either in person or through a proxy. This dispute evolved beyond simple tax opposition; it became a broader struggle over the limits of parliamentary authority and the preservation of colonial self-governance. By asserting that only their own local legislatures held the legitimate power to levy taxes, the colonists framed the British government's actions as a pattern of tyranny that violated their rights as Englishmen.143