Virtual representation

thumb|300px|Virtual Representative (standing, clad in brown) gives the Government (with blunderbuss) permission to rob a colonist. Catholic [[Quebec enjoys peace, Protestant Boston burns, and blinded Britannia approaches a pit. 1775 cartoon]]

The concept of virtual representation proposed that the members of the UK Parliament, including the Lords and the Crown-in-Parliament, reserved the right to speak for the interests of all British subjects, rather than for the interests of only the district that elected them or for the regions in which they held peerages and spiritual sway. Virtual representation was the British response to the First Continental Congress in the American colonies. The Second Continental Congress asked for representation in Parliament in the Suffolk Resolves, also known as the first Olive Branch Petition. Parliament claimed that their members had the well being of the colonists in mind. The patriots in the Colonies rejected this premise.

American Revolution

In the early stages of the American Revolution, colonists in the Thirteen Colonies rejected legislation imposed upon them by the Parliament of Great Britain because the colonies were not represented in Parliament. According to the British constitution, colonists argued, taxes could be levied on British subjects only with their consent. Because the colonists were represented only in their provincial assemblies, they said, only those legislatures could levy taxes in the colonies. This concept was famously expressed as "No taxation without representation".

Development

During the winter of 1764–1765, British MP George Grenville and his lieutenant, Thomas Whately, attempted to explicitly articulate a theory that could justify the lack of representation in colonial taxation. Grenville and Whately's theory, known as "virtual representation" put forth that, just like the vast majority of British citizens who could not vote, the colonists were nonetheless virtually represented in Parliament. Parliament rejected any criticism that virtual representation was constitutionally invalid as a whole, and passed the Declaratory Act in 1766, asserting the right of Parliament to legislate for the colonies "all cases whatsoever."

Reaction

The idea of virtual representation "found little support on either side of the Atlantic" as a means of solving the constitutional controversy between colonists and Britons. William Pitt, a defender of colonial rights, ridiculed virtual representation, calling it "the most contemptible idea that ever entered into the head of a man; it does not deserve serious refutation." Pitt said to the House of Commons in 1766, Pitt then stated to Parliament that, "I myself would have cited the two cases of Chester and Durham...to show that, even under former arbitrary reigns, Parliaments were ashamed of taxing a people without their consent, and allowed them representatives...[A] higher example [might be found] in Wales—Wales that never was taxed by Parliament till it was incorporated. James Otis Jr. reasoned that the legal liberties of British subjects meant that Parliament should, or could, only tax the colonists if they were actually represented in Westminster.

At the time of the American Revolution, only England and Wales and Scotland were directly represented in the Parliament of Great Britain among the many parts of the British Empire. The colonial electorate perhaps consisted of 10% to 20% of the total population, or 75% of adult males. In Britain, by contrast, representation was highly limited due to unequally distributed voting constituencies and property requirements; only 3% of the population, or between 17% and 23% of males, could vote and they were often controlled by local gentry.

As virtual representation was founded on "a defect in the Constitution of England," namely, the "Want of a Full Representation of all the People of England," it was, therefore, a pernicious notion that had been fabricated for the sole purpose of arguing the colonists "out of their civil Rights." Moreover, the poor state of representation in Britain "was no excuse for taxing the colonists without their consent."</p></blockquote>

Dulany Jr. also wrote that, "the Impropriety of a Taxation by the British Parliament...[is proven by] the Fact, that not one inhabitant in any Colony is, or can be actually or virtually represented by the British House of Commons." Dulany Jr. denied that Parliament had a right "to impose an internal Tax upon the Colonies, without their consent for the single Purpose of Revenue."

James Otis Jr.

In 1764, the Massachusetts politician James Otis Jr. said that,

The Stamp Act Congress

In 1765 Otis Jr. attended the Continental Congress, otherwise known as the Stamp Act Congress, along with other colonial delegates. The resolutions of the Congress stated that the Stamp Act had "a manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonists" and that "the only Representatives of the People of these Colonies, are Persons chosen therein by themselves, and that no Taxes ever have been, or can be Constitutionally imposed on them, but by their respective Legislature." Furthermore, it was declared that, "it is unreasonable and inconsistent with the Principles and Spirit of the British Constitution, for the People of Great-Britain, to grant to his Majesty the Property of the Colonists." They suggest the call for "No taxation without representation" and proposal of the inclusion of American representatives within Parliament, had they actually been implemented, would have encouraged coalition building between Americans and the British opposition (which was opposed to the dominant elite), disrupting the power of the incumbent landed gentry (who made up the elite). Through game theoretic models, Galiani and Torrens show that, once in Parliament, Americans could not feasibly commit to political alliances independent of the British opposition. As a result, mounting pressure for democratic reform would increase, posing a threat to the established British political order. Galiani and Torrens argue that British elites would incur greater losses to their domestic clout from American representation than from simply forfeiting a colony. The implications of forfeiting virtual representation forced the British elite, which dominated the government, to decide between maintaining the rule of the American colonies, which in their minds was infeasible, and engaging in war.

19th-century Britain

Cannon argues that for 18th- and 19th-century Britain "the doctrine of virtual representation was no more than a polite fiction. Indeed the assertion that there were no fundamental differences of interest between rich and poor is hard to reconcile with the determination of the upper classes to reserve political power for men of substance."