History of New England political freedoms and local democracy, which they felt was increasingly threatened by the English government. The main grievance was taxation, which colonists argued could only be imposed by their own legislatures and not by the Parliament in London. Their political cry was "no taxation without representation." A ship was planning to land tea in Boston on December 16, 1773, and Patriots associated with the Sons of Liberty raided the ship and dumped all the tea into the harbor. This Boston Tea Party outraged British officials, and the King and Parliament decided to punish Massachusetts, passing the Intolerable Acts in 1774.
No taxation without representation aware of any obstructions that lie in the way of it. While Knox, Grenville and Burke were not necessarily opposed in principle to direct colonial representation in Parliament, Grenville nonetheless conjectured that Parliament retained a constitutional right to virtually represent the colonial subjects. Burke supported the doctrine of virtual representation in Britain. Yet in his Parliamentary speech of 1774, entitled "On American Taxation", Burke responded to the suggestion that America was virtually represented in Parliament by remarking, What! does the electric force of virtual representation more easily pass over the Atlantic than pervade Wales, which lies in your neighborhood? or