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 the phrase, "no taxation without representation" in a sermon in 1750. The phrase revives a sentiment central to the cause of the English Civil War following the refusal of parliamentarian John Hampden to pay ship money tax. "No taxation without representation," in the context of British American Colonial taxation, appeared for the first time in the February 1768 "London Magazine" headline, on page 89, in the printing of Lord Camden’s "Speech on the Declaratory Bill of the Sovereignty of Great Britain over the Colonies." The English Parliament had controlled colonial trade and taxed imports and exports since 1660. By the