Who said 'No taxation without representation'?

The slogan no taxation without representation cannot be traced to a single speaker but is most often attributed to a network of colonial leaders including Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, James Otis of Massachusetts, Patrick Henry of Virginia, John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, and Daniel Dulany of Maryland, all of whom expressed the principle in similar terms during the 1761 to 1768 controversies over British taxation. James Otis is often credited with the most widely cited early formulation. In a 1761 Boston speech against the writs of assistance, he reportedly declared that taxation without representation was tyranny, arguing that an act of Parliament against the natural law was void. John Adams, who attended the speech as a young lawyer, later wrote that "then and there the child Independence was born." The exact words may have been refined in retelling, but Otis's argument shaped colonial constitutional thinking.

Patrick Henry of Virginia delivered the Virginia Resolves to the House of Burgesses on May 30, 1765, which declared in seven resolutions that only the Virginia legislature had the right to tax Virginians. His speech reportedly included the line that Caesar had his Brutus and George the Third should profit by their example, although the words may have been embellished. Henry's resolves spread through colonial newspapers and unified colonial opinion against the Stamp Act.

Samuel Adams of Massachusetts organized the Sons of Liberty in Boston, drafted the Massachusetts Circular Letter of February 1768 protesting the Townshend Duties, and led the Committees of Correspondence after 1772. He distilled the constitutional argument into pamphlets and town meeting resolutions. Daniel Dulany of Maryland published Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in 1765, which dismantled the British argument of virtual representation and articulated the principle that a free people could not be taxed without their consent. John Dickinson of Pennsylvania published Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania between December 1767 and February 1768, twelve essays that reached every colony and refuted the distinction between internal and external taxation.

The Stamp Act Congress of October 1765 in New York City formally adopted the principle in its Declaration of Rights and Grievances, which stated that the people of the colonies were not, and from their local circumstances cannot be, represented in the House of Commons in Great Britain, and that no taxes should be imposed on them but with their own consent given personally or by their representatives. By 1774 the slogan was the conventional shorthand for the colonial constitutional position, and it appeared in countless pamphlets, sermons, town resolutions, and tavern conversations.