d been for some time growing up which
was in some essential points opposed to both of them. This third party
was that of the New Whigs. They wished to reform the representation in
Parliament in such wise as to disfranchise the rotten boroughs and give
representatives to great towns like Leeds and Manchester. They held that
it was contrary to the principles of English liberty that the
inhabitants of such great towns should be obliged to pay taxes in
pursuance of laws which they had no share in making. The leader of the
New Whigs was the greatest Englishman of the eighteenth century, the
elder William Pitt, now about to pass into the House of Lords as Earl of
Chatham. Their leader next in importance, William Petty, Earl of
Shelburne, was in 1765 a young man of eight-and-twenty, and afterward
came to be known as one of the most learned and sagacious statesmen of
his time. These men were the forerunners of the great liberal leaders of
the nineteenth century, such men as Russell and Cobden and Gladstone.
Their first decisive and overwhelming victory was the passage of Lord
John Russell's Reform Bill in 1832, but the agitation for reform was
begun by William Pitt in 1745, and his famous son came very near winning
the victory on that question in 1782.

Now this question of parliamentary reform was intimately related to the
question of taxing the American colonies. From some points of view they
might be considered one and the same question. At a meeting of
Presbyterian ministers in Philadelphia, it was pertinently asked, "Have
two men chosen to represent a poor English borough that has sold its
votes to the highest bidder any pretence to say that they represent
Virginia or Pennsylvania? And have four hundred such fellows a right to
take our liberties?" In Parliament, on the other hand, as well as at
London dinner tables, and in newspapers and pamphlets, it was repeatedly
urged that the Americans need not make so much fuss about being taxed
without being represented, for in that respect they were no worse off
than the people of Sheffield or Birmingham. To this James Otis replied,
"Don't talk to us any more about those towns, for we are tired of such a
flimsy argument. If they are not represented, they ought to be;" and by
the New Whigs this retort was greeted with applause.

The opinions and aims of the three different parties were reflected in
the long debate over the repeal of the Stamp Act. The Tories wanted to
have the act