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.