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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL SOLUTIONS On the first day of October 1765, at the height of the Stamp Act crisis , a future loyalist wrote to the future governor of rebellious New Jersey wondering if there was a solution to the taxation question. "No man see[s] in a stronger light than I do," Jared Ingersoll insisted, "the dangerous tendency of admitting for a principle that the Parliament of Great Britain may tax us ad libitum. I view it as a gulph ready to devour, but when I look all round I am at a loss for a plan. I think there is all the reason in the world why we should be in a Situation Equally safe with the people in England; but how, and what, and when, I am almost weary in the Enquiry.... I spent the whole winter among Politicians, both English & American, and among Em all found no plan for America that did not appear to me full of the greatest difficulty & Embarassment."l The plan that Ingersoll sought had to come not from the colonies but from Parliament. The American position all along was that they could not be taxed for purposes of revenue without consent of elected representatives . For nine years, until 1774, the ministry and the legislators of Great Britain let the situation drift as there had been no urgency to formulate a definitive constitutional solution. After the Boston Tea Party, passage of the Intolerable Acts, and defiance of Parliament's authority by the first Continental Congress, the question could no longer be avoided. Mem234 PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL SOLUTIONS 235 bers of Parliament knew that if they were to prevent war, they had to devise a new constitutional relationship with the colonies. The problem was to agree on a way out of the impasse. As we have seen, and as the next two chapters will also show, there were many officials on all levels of the British government who felt the constitutional right to tax could not be abrogated or diluted. Those willing to abandon the principle viewed the matter in so many different ways that they could never have agreed on a single solution. By the end of 1774, for example, the British secretary-at-war was certain that no ministry would again levy an internal tax on the colonies. He was still persuaded of Parliament's right but doubted "at least the equity of such taxations." The word "equity" is worth attention; a solution based on equity would have been more legal and less political than one of expediency, as it would have taken into consideration such factors as that "Parliament is less acquainted with the state ofthe Colonies than of Great Britain" and "Members of neither House are to bear any part of the burthen they impose." But what was equitable ? There was no agreement. One pamphlet writer even seems to have believed that to meet the requirements for fairness or equity it would not matter who levied a tax, Parliament or the local colonial assembly. "[I]f the parliament actually take no more than is just and reasonable, it cannot be materially different, whether we or they grant, provided it be really granted, and the sum be mutually agreed on." Another 1774 pamphleteer, however, thought that equity barred Parliament from any taxing function. "Upon the whole," he wrote, "I humbly think that a right to tax the colonies is neither founded on reason, the situation of things, the opinions of civilians, nor yet is expedient at this very time, and consequently the mode of laying taxes ought to be committed to the colonies themselves."2 Some proposed constitutional solutions to the problem of parliamentary taxation of the colonies may be passed over quickly, as they were too extreme to have attracted sufficient support. Among these were proposals that Americans be granted representation in the House of Commons so that they could be taxed constitutionally and that Great Britain, by statute, renounce its right of taxation. Although the latter would be the ultimate British solution, it would be adopted only after the revolutionary war had long been in progress. A solution that could have succeeded had it obtained sufficient support while it was still possible for Americans to have accepted it was to do nothing: to maintain the status quo, and admit that the colonies paid their share of imperial defense through the commercial contract. "I would be very explicit in disclaiming any wish for a revenue ... while we cramp their...

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