The 1764 Sugar Act extended and amended earlier duties while promising more effective control of colonial trade. Samuel Adams answered with a forceful argument that taxes imposed without local legal representation reduced colonists from free subjects to subordination. Adams had also fallen badly into arrears while serving as a tax collector and was later forgiven by his colony. Most people in Britain paid taxes without a vote under the period's narrow franchise. The colonial grievance remained, but "representation" then meant access for a limited political class rather than universal democracy.
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Samuel Adams, taxation, and a limited franchise
Samuel Adams's case against taxation sits beside his own tax-collection record and the sharply restricted British franchise of 1764.