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 limited due to unequally distributed voting constituencies and property requirements; only 3% of the population could vote and they were often controlled by local gentry. This meant that spurious arguments had come to be employed in Britain to try to explain away and cover up the iniquities in its political life. Therefore the British government tried to argue that the colonists had virtual representation in their interests. In the winter of 1764–65, George Grenville, and his secretary Thomas Whately, invented the doctrine of 'virtual representation' in an attempt extend the scope of such unjust arguments to America, and thereby attempt