The Stamp Act Congress Declares the Rights of the Colonists

In the autumn of 1765, delegates from several colonies met in New York to answer the Stamp Act together. According to the editorial note on the American Battlefield Trust's copy of the document, the Massachusetts legislature had issued a circular on a motion of James Otis, inviting every colony to send delegates. Representatives from nine colonies appeared; Virginia, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Georgia were not represented. The Office of the Historian of the State Department likewise records that delegates from nine colonies met in October 1765 to petition against the tax.

On October 19, 1765, the congress agreed to a declaration of the rights and grievances of the colonists. It says the colonists owe the Crown the same allegiance as subjects born in the realm and "all due subordination" to Parliament, and that they are entitled to the inherent rights of natural-born subjects. It then argues that taxes may be imposed only with the consent of those taxed, given personally or by their representatives; that the colonists are not and cannot be represented in the House of Commons; that only their own legislatures can constitutionally tax them; and that trial by jury is an inherent right. It names the Stamp Act and the extension of the courts of admiralty beyond their ancient limits as tending to subvert colonial rights and liberties, and it ends by calling for a dutiful address to the King and applications to both Houses of Parliament for repeal.

The declaration is a petition for repeal, not a claim of independence, and the battlefields.org note adds that, because some delegates' credentials permitted them only to consult, the petition itself was signed by the members of six colonies. Its importance for the story that leads to the Constitution is the procedure as much as the argument: colonies that had acted separately sent delegates to a common meeting and agreed on a shared statement of principle, with consent to taxation at its centre. The same questions of representation and consent return in the Townshend Acts, the First Continental Congress and, eventually, the design of the national government.