Carpenter Hall

In this increasingly acrimonious atmosphere, the first Continental Congress was held at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1774, bringing together the more rebellious elements in the various colonial assemblies. Here, for the first time, resolutions were passed to withhold all taxes from the British government, if necessary by forcible resistance. Yet Samuel Adam's famous slogan 'No taxation with representation' was not a rejection of Britishness, but rather an emphatic assertion of Britishness. What the colonists said they were doing was demanding the same liberty enjoyed by their fellow subjects on the other side of the Atlantic. At this stage, they saw themselves as no more than transatlantic Britons who wanted real, local representation, not the 'virtual' representation they were being offered in the distant House of Commons. In other words, they wanted their assemblies to be put on a par with the Westminster Parliament, in what would have been a reformed, quasi-federal Empire. As Lord Mansfield put it in 1775, the colonists 'would stand in relation to Great Britain .. as Scotland stood towards England, previous to the treaty of Union.' ~ Page 93