But in its different clauses it encountered a twofold opposition, which he had, probably, not anticipated.  It is unnecessary to notice that which rested solely on the inexpediency of repealing the Stamp Act, “the compulsory enforcement of which was required by the honor and dignity of the kingdom.”  But the first clause was even more strenuously resisted, on grounds which its opponents affirmed to rest on the fundamental principles of the constitution.  It was urged in the House of Commons by Mr. Pitt that, “as the Colonies were not represented in Parliament, Great Britain had no legal right nor power to lay a tax upon them—­that taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power.  Taxes,” said the great orator, “are the voluntary gift and grant of the Commons alone.  In legislation the three estates of the realm are alike concerned; but the concurrence of the peers and the crown to a tax is only necessary to clothe it with the form of a law; the gift and grant is in the Commons alone....  The distinction between legislation and taxation is essentially necessary to liberty.”

Mr. Pitt had no claim to be considered as a great authority in the principles of constitutional law.  George II., slight as was his political knowledge or wisdom, complained on one occasion of the ignorance of a Secretary of State who had never read Vattel; and in this very debate he even boasted of his ignorance of “law-cases and acts of Parliament.”  But his coadjutor in the House of Lords (Lord Camden, at this time Chief-justice of the Common Pleas) owed the chief part of the respect in which he was held to his supposed excellence as a constitutional lawyer, and he fully endorsed and expanded Pitt’s arguments when the bill came up to the House of Lords.  He affirmed that he spoke as “the defender of the law and the constitution; that, as the affair was of the greatest consequence, and in its consequences might involve the fate of kingdoms, he had taken the strictest review of his arguments, he had examined and re-examined all his authorities; and that his searches had more and more convinced him that the British Parliament had no right to tax the Americans.  The Stamp Act was absolutely illegal, contrary to the fundamental laws of nature, contrary to the fundamental laws of this constitution—­a constitution governed on the eternal and immutable laws of nature.  The doctrine which he was asserting was not new; it was as old as the constitution; it grew up with it; indeed, it was its support.  Taxation and representation are inseparably united.  God hath joined them; no British government can put them asunder.  To endeavor to do so is to stab our very vitals.”  And he objected to the first clause (that which declared the power and right to tax), on the ground that if the ministers “wantonly pressed this declaration, although they were now repealing the Stamp Act, they might pass it again in a month.”  He even argued that “they must have future taxation in