As the resistance of the colonies to this taxation led straight to open war and final independence, it will be worth while to look rather closely at the stamp tax, and at the subject of representation, which was at once linked with it. The terms of the Stamp Act are not of great importance, because, though it did have at least one bad feature as a law, the whole opposition was on the ground that there should be no taxation whatever without representation. It made no difference to its enemies that the money obtained by the sale of stamps was to stay in America to support the soldiers needed for colonial protection. Nothing would appease them while the taxing body contained no representatives of their own choosing. To attain this right, they made their fight upon legal and historical grounds--the least favorable they could have chosen. They declared that, under the British constitution, there could be no taxation except by persons known and voted for by the persons taxed. The wisest men seemed not to see the kernel of the dispute. A very real danger threatened the colonies--subject as they were to a body unsympathetic with the political and economic conditions in which they were living--but they had no legal safeguard.[54] They must either sever the existing constitutional bond or get Parliament of its own will to limit its power over the colonies. All unwittingly the opponents of the Stamp Act were struggling with a problem that could be solved only by revolution. Two great fundamental questions were at issue: Should there be a British empire ruled by Parliament in all its parts, either in England or oversea? or should Parliament govern at home, and the colonial assemblies in America, with only a federal bond to unite them? Should the English understanding of representation be imposed upon the colonies? or should America’s institution triumph in its own home? If there was to be a successful imperial system, Parliament must have the power to tax all parts of the empire. It was of no use to plead that Parliament had never taxed the colonies before, for, as Doctor Johnson wrote, “We do not put a calf into the plough: we wait till it is an ox.”[55] The colonies were strong enough to stand taxation now, and the reasonable dispute must be as to the manner of it. To understand the widely different points of view of Englishmen and Americans, we must examine their systems of representative government.