Mr. Jenyns wished it known that
he was not the man to carry owls to Athens, and that he would
never have thought it necessary to prove either the right or the
expediency of taxing our American colonies, "had not many
arguments been lately flung out...which with insolence equal
to their absurdity deny them both." With this conciliatory
preliminary disclaimer of any lack of intelligence on his own
part, Mr. Jenyns proceeded to point out, in his most happy vein,
how unsubstantial American reasoning really appeared when,
brushing aside befogging irrelevancies, you once got to the heart
of the question.
The heart of the question was the proposition that there should
be no taxation without representation; upon which principle it
was necessary to observe only that many individuals in England,
such as copyholders and leaseholders, and many communities, such
as Manchester and Birmingham, were taxed in Parliament without
being represented there. If Americans quoted you "Lock, Sidney,
Selden, and many other great names to prove that every Englishman
...is still represented in Parliament," he would only ask why,
since Englishmen are all represented in Parliament, are not all
Americans represented in exactly the same way? Either Manchester
is not represented or Massachusetts is.
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