VIRTUAL REPRESENTATION
- Virtual representation is the idea that elected officials embody the voice of the entire populace, despite the minimal scope of the electing body
- At the time in Britain, non-landowners, persons under twenty-one, and persons from certain towns were not allowed to vote for representatives in Parliament
- Britain believed that the voices of these people were nonetheless represented, and that the situation with the colonists was not terribly different that that of the British citizens who lived in the homeland
- Essentially, the British government argued that the colonists were afforded the same representation as those in Britain, regardless of the colonists' contrary opinions
COLONISTS' RESPONSE
- Colonists responded with the argument that while certain persons in Britain may not vote, they hold the right and the opportunity to become eligible to vote (i.e. a non-landowner can acquire land or a person living in a nonvoting town can move to a voting town)
- On the contrary, the colonists have no opportunity to ever move into a position to vote
- The colonists argued that difference in the distance between Parliament and nonvoting British towns versus Parliament and the American colonies created a completely different situation
- While taxes imposed by local representatives on nonvoting towns would affect the rest of the motherland, taxes imposed on the American colonies would hardly affect the people of the motherland at all
- Representatives in Parliament could simply shift taxes upon American colonists without any domestic repercussions
- The colonists argued that they were not afforded the protection of the British army and navy that the domestic taxpayers received
- While the mother-country may have supported the colonists in the French and Indian War, it did so out of a desire to expand its territory and increase its wealth, rather than to aid the colonists as it so nobly professed to do