Virtual representation

Virtual representation stated that the members of Parliament, including the Lords and the Crown-in-Parliament, reserved the right to speak for the interests of all British subjects, rather than for the interests of only the district that elected them or for the regions in which they held peerages and spiritual sway. Virtual Representation was the British response to the First Continental Congress in the American colonies. The Second Continental Congress asked for representation in Parliament in the Suffolk Resolves, also known as the first Olive Branch Petition. Parliament claimed that their members had the well being of the colonists in mind. The Colonies rejected this premise.

In the early stages of the American Revolution, colonists in the Thirteen Colonies rejected legislation imposed upon them by the Parliament of Great Britain because the colonies were not represented in Parliament. According to the British constitution, colonists argued, taxes could be levied on British subjects only with their consent. Because the colonists were represented only in their provincial assemblies, they said, only those legislatures could levy taxes in the colonies. This concept was famously expressed as "No taxation without representation."

In The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution, Jack P. Greene writes that during "the winter of 1764-5, in the months preceding the final passage of the Stamp Act," George Grenville and his lieutenant, Thomas Whately, attempted to explicitly articulate "a theoretical justification for the exertion of parliamentary authority" in the area of colonial taxation. Grenville and Whately's theory, known as "virtual representation," alleged that "the colonists, like those individuals and groups who resided in Britain but had no voice in elections, were nonetheless virtually represented in Parliament."George Grenville defended all the taxes by arguing that the colonists were virtually represented in Parliament, a position that had critics on both sides of the British Empire. However, Parliament rejected the criticism that virtual representation was constitutionally invalid as a whole, and passed the Declaratory Act in 1766, asserting the right of Parliament to legislate for the colonies "all cases whatsoever."

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