I was just curious if the English shared our plight of “taxation without representation” in the years before the Revolutionary War.
Those wacky English started toying around with this weird idea of representative governance way back in the 13th Century. They called it “Parliament” or some such. And something about Houses, though Lords only know if it’s Common enough knowledge that there might be a Wikipedia article about it.
The House of Commons represented the Common people. However, the number of seats was by no means apportioned by population back in those days. Some large areas had only a modest number of seats, while other “rotten or pocket boroughs” had seats that far outweighed their importance or population.
"The term “rotten” or “decayed” borough referred to a parliamentary borough or constituency in the United Kingdom which had a very small population and was used by a patron to exercise undue and unrepresentative influence within parliament. Such boroughs existed for centuries, although the term rotten borough only came into usage in the 18th century. Typically rotten boroughs were once-flourishing centres with substantial population, but which became depopulated and deserted over the centuries.
The true rotten borough was a borough of an extremely small electorate. A similar type of corrupt constituency was the pocket borough — a borough constituency with a small enough electorate to be under the effective control (or in the pocket) of one major landowner.
For many years, constituencies did not change to reflect population shifts, and in some places the number of electors became so few that they could be bribed. A member of Parliament for one borough might represent only a few people, whereas some large population centres were poorly represented. Manchester, for example, was part of the larger constituency of Lancashire and did not elect members separately until 1832…At one point, out of 405 elected MPs, 293 were chosen by fewer than 500 voters each. …
Some rotten boroughs were once important or played a major role in England’s politics, but had fallen into insignificance. For example, Old Sarum was a flourishing town in the twelfth century, but when Salisbury was founded in a less exposed location nearby, the majority of Old Sarum’s population moved there. The qualification “rotten” seemed to refer both to “corrupt” and “in decline for a very long time”."
So the answer is yes, the English had representation in Colonial times, but it was hardy Modern democracy.
Nitpick, the name “commons” in House of Commons refers not to commoners or common people, but to the commons or municipalities of England.
The conservative viewpoint in 1776 was not only were the residents of Britain represented in the British parliament, but that the colonists were too.
The job of the commons was to represent the nation – the entire nation, including that part of the nation which happened to reside in his Majesty’s colonies overeas. They were chose for that purpose by a very small subset of the nation – free males who met age and property qualifications, and resided in the right places in Britain, and professed the right religion, etc, etc – but political theory distinguished between who chose MPs, and to whom they owed their duty. Each MP was supposed to act on behalf of the nation, not on behalf of the individuals (or, frequently, individual) to whom he owed his election.
This system didn’t work so well, of course, which is why we had the Reform Acts in the nineteenth century. But the beef of many of those who led the revolution, I suspect, was not so much that every American resident was excluded from the process, but that men of their property, standing, class, etc, did not have the kind of influence in the process which they would have had, had they lived in most parts of Britain. It wan’t that they didn’t have democracy; it was that they didn’t have oligarchy.
Nonsense. The statement that they were subject to “taxation without representation” means simply that they were excluded from choosing representatives who participated in government. There is no “conservative” way to spin the mechanism to avoid the truth of that. The fact that the members of Parliament had a duty to be good stewards of the nation does not mean that they were “representing” the viewpoints of the colonists at all.
There were problems with democracy in Great Britain in the late 18th century, including the very different sizes of the electorates, and the fact that only men (and not women) with property or income could vote. However, if the system had been extended to North America, with (say) one or two MPs per colony, then the whole slogan of “taxation without representation” would have lost its meaning.
Of course, with representation, Colonists felt the other issue of the day would soon vanish: Colonial status. They desperately wanted to create their own manufactures. The prohibitions against trading internationally were likewise despised by the colonies.
The residents of Washington DC pay federal taxes and, um … that’s not irony is it?
In modern terms, yes, it is true that the British also did not have representation.
Representation was so qualified as to be meaningless to 90-95% of the population, and in some ways, the North American colonists actually had better access to representation than the mass of the British population.
The main moving force behind more full representation problaby had its roots both in the loss of the colonies, and the French revolution, as it had become pretty clear that despite crackdowns ont he Chartists, change was coming and it was best to manage the change, rather than be brushed aside by it.
Try telling that to Edmund Burke! It’s true that the colonists were “excluded from choosing representatives who participated in government”, but so was the great bulk of the nation; that did not stop Parliament regarding itself as representative of the nation. Political theory at the time - and for a long time afterwards - distinguished between being represented, and choosing your representatives, and in fact this was the dominant political view in Britain for nearly a century after the American revolution.
Firstly, as far as the conservatives were concerned, it was not the duty of MPs to represent anybody’s viewpoint. They were not delegates, there to do what voters wanted; they were chosen to exercise their own judgment, and should be chosen not becaus they were biddable but because they possessed sound judgment and understanding. Secondly, they were there to exercise their judgment on behalf of the entire nation, not just that part of it which happened to be involved in choosing them.
To go back to the OP:
The English were in fact much more heavily taxed than the colonists - taxes were very low in the colonies, which were a constant drain on the British government. And, as already noted, they were almost equally unrepresented, with perhaps 95-98% of them having no parliamentary vote, as opposed to 100% in the colonies.
But the 2-5% who did have a vote made a signficant difference - a sufficient difference, plainly, to make relatively high levels of taxation politically feasible.
If you were a disenfranchised tenant farmer, your landlord was bothered if you were in dire straits (even if only because this affected your capacity to pay your rent). Because the wealthy and powerful had a substantial stake in the community, they had an interest - financial, but also personal and emotional - in the peace, prosperity, etc of the community, so they tended not to use their voting rights just for purely private gain.
But the further away you were, the less use this was. The tenant farmer might not have a vote, but a voter could see how he was doing, was interested in it and accepted some responsibility for it. Plus, the farmer could speak to the voter, and express his concerns, and even hope to be listened to and to exert some influence with him. Whereas the colonist - even a relatively wealthy and powerful one - was much further removed from any position where he could influence the levers of power in this way.
So the view that a Member of Parliament could be selected by the few but still represent the many might have had some traction in Britain - enough to keep the country politically stable even with much higher taxes than the colonists had to put up with - but it had very little traction in the American colonies.
For several years now, District of Columbia license plates have borne the motto “Taxation without representation” as a rebuke to Congress for keeping them mired in that very irony. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents DC in the House of Representatives, is called a “delegate” because she isn’t allowed to be a representative, and she isn’t allowed a vote in Congress (except in committee).
That may be changing soon. The District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009 passed the Senate earlier this year, and if it passes the House and becomes law, Ms. Norton will be able to be elected a full representative next year.
But you’ve missed out one crucial element in the system - the county franchises. For obvious reasons, most voters who did have the vote did not have it as electors in rotten boroughs. And some boroughs had very wide franchises. But what gave most electors their vote was the 40s. freehold franchise in the county elections. By the eighteenth century even relatively modest property owners qualified for that.
However, calculating just how many did qualify is actually very difficult. There was no electoral roll and you can’t just total up the numbers who voted in particular elections. Those estimates that have been made tend to put the figure at just over 10 percent of adult males in England. Not huge, but not so far off one vote per household.
It is true that MPs for a county seat had no more votes in the Commons than one for a rotten borough. But the county seats were always more prestigious and some parliamentary historians think that those who held them tended to have more influence in debates.
Good point.