Possession of property liberated them from social as well as political classification. Since each man possessed his own land, growing his own food and generating his own income from it, he revered land as his life and liberty. Parliaments attempt to tax the colonists, therefore, in essence threatened their property and consequently their liberty. The colonists based their argument against Parliamentary taxation as a denial to being taxed without representation. They proclaimed that the Parliament's authority over the colonies was limited to legislation and did not permit taxation. The British on the other hand showed no regard for the colonists' demands. They found the idea of separating legislation and taxation absolutely absurd. They argued that the colonists' enjoyed a virtual representation in the Parliament embodied in its each member. The author describes the Parliament as very "parochial and provincial- in perspective. Its vision was limited to domestic issues and the Parliamentarians failed to develop a vision broad enough to perceive the issues of the colonies. Paraphrasing it, the colonists viewed the Parliament as a low calibrated institution. The refusal to accept Parliamentary taxation or legislation for that matter led the colonists to a more radical conclusion: did the Parliament have any authority at all over the colonies? .
During the struggle to limit Parliamentary authority, more radical ideas mushroomed among the colonists. Galloway went so far as to suggest the formation of an American Parliament, subsidiary to the British Parliament to regulate colonial governance. The general emerging idea was the demand for equal rights comparable to their counterparts in Great Britain. The colonists were unwittingly and steadily moving towards the notion of human equality. Repudiation to the Parliament had elevated the rank of their assemblies to that of the Parliament itself.