The Long Fuse - Virtual Representation

American Political History · Oct 9, 2023 · 26m

The Stamp Act of 1765 was a small tax. To the men who wrote it in London, it was the most reasonable thing in the world: the colonies should help pay for their own defense. So why did a few pennies on paper nearly tear the British Empire apart?

This is the episode where the argument begins, not in the streets but on the page, in a war of pamphlets between the finest legal minds on both sides of the Atlantic. James Otis declares that taxation without representation is tyranny. Daniel Dulany takes the British theory of “virtual representation” and tears it to shreds. And in London, the witty…