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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE THE BRITISH PERSPECTIVE The predicament Lord North had to solve with his plan to end the taxation controversy was constitutional. He no longer had to be concerned with members of Parliament who wanted to obtain revenue from the Americans. That hope was no longer seriously entertained. The people about whom he had to be concerned were those who, fearful of resurgent monarchy, insisted that parliamentary sovereignty must not be diluted by the slightest iota. Even after North learned that the colonies had rejected his plan and it was apparent he would have to make further concessions , he assured the House of Commons that he would go no further than suspending the right of taxation; he would not renounce it. l The constitutional barrier that kept North from offering the colonies greater concessions consisted of more than the demand that the right be retained even if only in theory. There was also an extreme faction in and out of the British government that would not give even that much, that insisted that the reality of revenue did not matter, that the right to tax had to be exercised, not suspended, even if no income were obtained. These people, claiming there was no middle ground between American independence and parliamentary exercise of the right to tax the colonies, may have been the first on either side of the Atlantic to realize that the constitutional predicament could not be compromised. "[T]he colonies 262 THE BRITISH PERSPECTIVE would be quite emancipated," it was said with more constitutional than political logic, "if neither the MODE of raising taxes nor the QUANTUM is to be left in the power of Parliament."2 Largely to reassure those who saw the constitutional predicament in such absolute terms, North insisted that his plan to suspend the exercise of the power was more a matter of form than of substance; sovereignty and parliamentary supremacy would remain unimpaired. One reason for including requisitions in his proposal was not to obtain revenue but to maintain the sovereign power. "[I]f the dispute in which the Americans have engaged goes to the whole of our authority, we can enter into no negociation, we can meet no compromise," North explained. "If it be only as to the suspension of the exercise of our right, or as to the mode of laying and raising taxes for a contribution towards the common defence , 1think it would be just, it would be wise to meet any fair proposition , which may come in an authentic way from any province or colony."3 To avoid the constitutional barrier, the prime minister, walking an intellectual tightrope, postulated a theoretical concept in defiance of the dominant constitutional theory of the eighteenth century. It was then legal dogma that sovereignty was so absolute a principle that it could not be diluted or compromised without being destroyed. North claimed that his plan could suspend the exercise of sovereign power yet leave sovereignty intact, that he "was for preserving the right of Parliament to tax the Colonies, but for transferring the exercise of that right to the Colony Assemblies." For many members of Parliament, North's sleight of hand was too transparent, he was asking them to accept as theory what was constitutionally impossible. A former attorney general of England had stated the orthodox legal principle during the Stamp Act crisis when he warned that "[Y]ou cannot put a case for the dissolution of Governments by law."4 The logic of constitutional sovereignty explains both why Lord North's proposal did not go further and why some constitutional theorists felt it went too far. If sovereignty was the element of government that could not be diminished without being lost, it followed, at least in theory, that sovereign power had to be asserted to be retained. Suspension of power meant its surrender. More than any other consideration, this constitutionallogic impelled those members of Parliament who insisted that the right must not only be asserted, as North asserted it, but it must also be exercised. Without exercise it did not exist, for, according to the earl of Suffolk, "[t]he right implied ... the necessity of the exercise of it."S THE BRITISH PERSPECTIVE ThE DANGER OF CONCESSION The constitutional logic impelling a minority of imperialist members of Parliament to insist that the right of taxation had to be exercised or it was no right impelled a much greater number of them, perhaps a majority of the Commons, to prevent outright repeal...

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