=122. The British View of the Matter.=—In the course of centuries the British people had come to recognize the principle, “No taxation without representation.” But in the time of George III. representation, even in England, was absurdly imperfect. Boroughs of not more than half a dozen voters sometimes sent two members to the British Parliament, while some large towns like Manchester and Birmingham sent no representatives. The people permitted this bad state of affairs to continue, because the doctrine was held that every member of Parliament, no matter by whom he was elected, represented all the people of the kingdom, and not merely those who had chosen him. According to this theory, the colonies were as much represented in Parliament as Manchester and Birmingham; and if those towns could be taxed without direct representation, there appeared no just reason why Massachusetts and Virginia and the other colonies should complain of the same method. =123. The Colonial View of the Case.=—But the colonists, and a small but very influential minority in Parliament, took another view of the case. Many of the colonies had been settled by men who had come to America for the purpose of escaping from a system which they regarded as unfair and tyrannical. Two revolutions in England had established the authority of Parliament as against the individual will of the king, but the methods of representation had not been changed. Indeed, they were worse than they had been when the Puritans came to New England, more than a hundred years before. During the intervening period the colonists had been receiving a liberal education in matters of government. In their town meetings and their provincial legislatures they had had to consider and decide a vast number of subjects, until they very naturally came to think they could understand the real requirements of the country far better than could a Parliament three thousand miles away. Some of the colonial writers denied that the British had the legal right to tax the Americans, while others claimed that, even if they had the legal right, an enforcement of that right would be contrary to the whole spirit of English liberty, and ought to be resisted. =124. Folly of the British Government.=—If the British government had been wise, these differences might have been reconciled; but George III. and the friends whom he called about him could not see why Boston, New York, and Philadelphia should object to taxation while Birmingham and Manchester did not. The fact remained, however, that the colonies did object, and this important difference any wise government would have seen and taken into account. But George III. stubbornly held that if the colonies resisted the supreme authority of the king and Parliament, they must simply be forced into obedience. This doctrine, for which the king, and the king alone, was responsible, was the fatal error that cost Great Britain the American colonies.