Royal authority and the right to representation

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Virtual representation was the idea that Parliament represented everyone in the British Empire, including the colonists, even though they elected no MPs. The colonists rejected it because they believed that only their own elected assemblies had the right to tax them: there should be 'no taxation without representation'.

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Source A is very useful for studying the British government's response to colonial resistance because it shows the attitude of the King at a turning point in the crisis. George III writes that New England is already 'in a state of rebellion' and that 'blows must decide' whether the colonies would be subject to Britain or independent. This shows that by November 1774 he saw no room for compromise and expected force to settle the dispute. This fits what the government did. After the Boston Tea Party, Parliament had passed the Coercive Acts, which closed Boston harbour and took away much of Massachusetts' self-government, and General Gage was made governor with more troops. In April 1775 Gage sent soldiers to seize weapons at Concord, leading to the first fighting at Lexington and Concord. In 1775 the King rejected the Olive Branch Petition from Congress and declared the colonies to be in rebellion, and the Prohibitory Act cut off colonial trade.

The provenance makes the source especially valuable. It is a private letter from the King to his Prime Minister, Lord North, so it shows George III's real views rather than propaganda. It is also important because the colonists increasingly blamed the King personally, as the Declaration of Independence later did. However, George III was a constitutional monarch who governed through his ministers and Parliament. The source shows that he strongly supported a hard line, but it does not prove that he alone decided policy.

The source also has limits. It is a single sentence written before the fighting began, so it shows intentions rather than actions. It does not show that North offered a Conciliatory Proposition in February 1775, promising not to tax colonies that paid for their own defence, or that politicians such as Edmund Burke and Chatham argued for conciliation. Overall, Source A is very useful for showing the determination at the top of government that made war likely, but it does not show the full range of the government's response.

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The Stamp Act crisis was significant because it was the first time the colonies united against a British tax, and it established the principle that would lead to revolution: that Parliament had no right to tax the colonies. The Stamp Act, passed in March 1765, taxed newspapers, legal documents and playing cards to help pay for the army in America. It was the first direct tax Parliament had placed on the colonies, and colonial resistance was immediate. The Virginia Resolves declared that only Virginia's assembly could tax Virginians, the Sons of Liberty organised protests, and in Boston crowds attacked the property of the stamp distributor, Andrew Oliver, forcing him to resign. In October 1765 the Stamp Act Congress brought together representatives of nine colonies, who declared that only their own assemblies could tax them. Merchants also boycotted British goods.

In the short term the crisis showed that resistance could work. British merchants hit by the boycotts petitioned Parliament, Benjamin Franklin warned MPs that the colonists would never pay the tax unless forced, and in March 1766 Rockingham's government repealed the Act. The colonists celebrated, and the idea of 'no taxation without representation' became the basis of their case.

However, the crisis was also significant because it did not solve the underlying problem. On the same day as the repeal, Parliament passed the Declaratory Act, which said that Parliament could make laws for the colonies 'in all cases whatsoever'. Britain therefore still believed it had the right to tax the colonies, and it tried again with the Townshend duties of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773. Each time the colonists used the methods they had developed in 1765, such as boycotts, the Sons of Liberty and meetings between colonies, which led to the First Continental Congress in 1774. The Stamp Act crisis is therefore often seen as the beginning of the American Revolution.

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Ideas such as the rule of law, representation, democracy and equality have been central to changing the relationship between the citizen and the state, because they defined what people demanded and justified their challenges. However, ideas alone rarely brought change. They became law when war, economic change, protest or the decisions of governments made change possible, so ideas were essential but not usually the main factor.

Ideas shaped the relationship from the beginning. Magna Carta in 1215 set out the idea that the king was under the law, and the Parliament of 1265 introduced the idea that knights and townsmen should be represented. In 1381 John Ball's preaching expressed the idea that all people were equal. In the 1640s the Levellers argued that government should rest on the consent of the people, and at Putney Colonel Rainsborough declared that 'the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he'.

The American Revolution shows the power of ideas especially clearly. The colonists' protests began over taxes, but ideas of natural rights and government by consent, expressed in the slogan 'no taxation without representation', in Thomas Paine's Common Sense and in the Declaration of Independence, turned them into a revolution that created a republic. These ideas crossed the Atlantic, encouraging British reformers such as John Cartwright and later the radicals and Chartists, whose six points of 1838 demanded votes for all men, the secret ballot and payment of MPs. In the twentieth century ideas of equality drove the campaigns for women's suffrage and against racial discrimination, leading to the Race Relations Acts of 1965, 1968 and 1976 and the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975.

However, ideas usually needed other factors to bring change. The Levellers were crushed in 1649 and the Chartists' petitions were all rejected, even though their ideas were later achieved. The Great Reform Act of 1832 came about because industrial towns such as Manchester had no MPs and because riots and the Days of May frightened the government. The Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 owed much to party rivalry between Disraeli and Gladstone. Women gained the vote in 1918 only after the First World War had changed attitudes, despite decades of campaigning. Protest also mattered: the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963 helped lead to the Race Relations Act of 1965, and the Brixton riots led to the Scarman Report of 1981. Religion could also be decisive, as the Pilgrimage of Grace shows, since it was fought over the Royal Supremacy and the monasteries rather than over new ideas of rights.

Overall, ideas were the most important factor in shaping what citizens demanded, and they became more important over time, from Magna Carta to the campaigns for equality in the twentieth century. But they were not usually the main factor in bringing about change, because governments acted only when war, economic change or pressure from protest forced them to. Ideas were necessary for change, but they were rarely enough on their own.