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