No taxation without representation the House of Commons must include colonial representatives when it voted on colonial matters, or operate by using the consent of the colonial Assemblies. The Americans rejected the Stamp Act of 1765 brought in by British Prime Minister George Grenville, and violently rejected the remaining tax on tea imports, under the Tea Act passed in May 1773, at the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. The Parliament considered this an illegal act because they believed it undermined the authority of the Crown-in-Parliament. When the British then used the military to enforce laws that the colonists believed Parliament had passed
No taxation without representation It was afterwards put forward with approbation by the celebrated Dr. Adam Smith, and advocated for a time, but afterwards rejected and strongly opposed, by Dr. Benjamin Franklin." The eloquent 1768 Petition, Memorial, and Remonstrance objecting to taxation, written by the Virginia House of Burgesses and endorsed by every other Colony, was sent to the British Government, which seems to have ignored it. The phrase had been used for more than a generation in Ireland. By 1765, the term was in use in Boston, and local politician James Otis was most famously associated with the phrase, "taxation without representation is