<P> The English Parliament had controlled colonial trade and taxed imports and exports since 1660 . By the 1760s, the Americans were being deprived of a historic right . The English Bill of Rights 1689 had forbidden the imposition of taxes without the consent of Parliament . Since the colonists had no representation in Parliament, the taxes violated the guaranteed Rights of Englishmen . Parliament initially contended that the colonists had virtual representation, but the idea "found little support on either side of the Atlantic". John Dunmore Lang wrote in 1852, "The person who first suggested the idea (of Parliamentary representation for the colonies) appears to have been Oldmixon, an American annalist of the era of Queen Anne or George I. It was afterwards put forward with approbation by the celebrated Dr. Adam Smith, and advocated for a time, but afterwards rejected and strongly opposed, by Dr. Benjamin Franklin ." </P> <P> The eloquent 1768 Petition, Memorial, and Remonstrance objecting to taxation, written by the Virginia House of Burgesses and endorsed by every other Colony, was sent to the British Government, which seems to have ignored it . </P> <P> The phrase had been used for more than a generation in Ireland . By 1765, the term was in use in Boston, and local politician James Otis was most famously associated with the phrase, "taxation without representation is tyranny ." In the course of the Revolutionary era (1750--1783), many arguments were pursued that sought to resolve the dispute surrounding Parliamentary sovereignty, taxation, self - governance and representation . </P> <P> In the course of the 1760s and 1770s, William Pitt the Elder, Sir William Pulteney, and George Grenville, amongst other prominent Britons and colonial Americans, such as Joseph Galloway, James Otis Jr., Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, the London Quaker Thomas Crowley, Royal Governors such as Thomas Pownall M.P., William Franklin, Sir Francis Bernard, and the Attorney - General of Quebec, Francis Maseres, debated and circulated plans for the creation of colonial seats in London, imperial union with Great Britain, or a federally representative British Parliament with powers of taxation that was to consist of American, West Indian, Irish and British Members of Parliament . Despite the fact that these ideas were considered and discussed seriously on both sides of the Atlantic, it appears that neither the American Congress, nor the colonial Assemblies, nor the British Government in Westminster, at least prior to the Carlisle Peace Commission of 1778, officially proposed such constitutional developments . It must be noted, however, that Governor Thomas Hutchinson apparently referred to a colonial representational proposal when he wrote that, </P>

Where did the phrase taxation without representation come from