“No taxation without representation” was one of the political cries of American colonists before the American Revolution. While the slogan inspired colonial enmity of the British Parliament and spearheaded efforts by prominent Americans and Britons to achieve some form of representation in the British government, it fell on deaf ears of common British citizens, including one correspondent of The Newcastle Chronicle, published in Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, England.

250 years ago today, this unknown correspondent’s opinion of the matter was printed for British citizens to read and consider:

When we consider (says a correspondent) in our present dispute with America, that there are large manufacturing towns in England, who, though they have no direct representative, yet pay the same taxes as those who have; that there are many thousands of merchants, manufacturers and others in Britan, who never had a vote for a representative, and therefore cannot be said to have consented to the taxes imposed upon them by the constituent powers of the legislature; and when we consider that the people of the Isle of Man, who once had superior privileges to any province in America, are deprived of all trade but with Britain, and obliged to pay taxes by British acts, without having one representative in the British Parliament. When we consider these things, how ill grounded must the complaints of the Americans appear to every man of feafe, and how necessary does it become to exact that obedience from their fears, which is neither to be hoped from their gratitude nor from their justice.