Question: Why did the American Whigs hold the belief that Parliament had no right to tax the colonies?
About the article "Boston Tea Party", section "Townshend duty crisis".

Candidate passages:
By the time the Declaration of Independence was adopted in July 1776, the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain had been at war for more than a year.
Relations between the colonies and the mother country had been deteriorating since the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763.
The war had plunged the British government deep into debt, and so Parliament enacted a series of measures to increase tax revenue from the colonies.
Parliament believed that these acts, such as the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts of 1767, were a legitimate means of having the colonies pay their fair share of the costs to keep the colonies in the British Empire.
Many colonists, however, had developed a different conception of the empire.
Because the colonies were not directly represented in Parliament, colonists argued that Parliament had no right to levy taxes upon them.
This tax dispute was part of a larger divergence between British and American interpretations of the British Constitution and the extent of Parliament's authority in the colonies.
The orthodox British view, dating from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, was that Parliament was the supreme authority throughout the empire, and so by definition anything Parliament did was constitutional.
In the colonies, however, the idea had developed that the British Constitution recognized certain fundamental rights that no government—not even Parliament—could violate.
After the Townshend Acts, some essayists even began to question whether Parliament had any legitimate jurisdiction in the colonies at all.
Anticipating the arrangement of the British Commonwealth, by 1774 American writers such as Samuel Adams, James Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson were arguing that Parliament was the legislature of Great Britain only, and that the colonies, which had their own legislatures, were connected to the rest of the empire only through their allegiance to the Crown. 
Controversy between Great Britain and the colonies arose in the 1760s when Parliament sought, for the first time, to impose a direct tax on the colonies for the purpose of raising revenue.
Some colonists, known in the colonies as Whigs, objected to the new tax program, arguing that it was a violation of the British Constitution.
Britons and British Americans agreed that, according to the constitution, British subjects could not be taxed without the consent of their elected representatives.
In Great Britain, this meant that taxes could only be levied by Parliament.
Colonists, however, did not elect members of Parliament, and so American Whigs argued that the colonies could not be taxed by that body.
According to Whigs, colonists could only be taxed by their own colonial assemblies.
Colonial protests resulted in the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1765, but in the 1766 Declaratory Act, Parliament continued to insist that it had the right to legislate for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever".
When new taxes were levied in the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767, Whig colonists again responded with protests and boycotts.
Merchants organized a non-importation agreement, and many colonists pledged to abstain from drinking British tea, with activists in New England promoting alternatives, such as domestic Labrador tea.
Smuggling continued apace, especially in New York and Philadelphia, where tea smuggling had always been more extensive than in Boston.
Dutied British tea continued to be imported into Boston, however, especially by Richard Clarke and the sons of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson, until pressure from Massachusetts Whigs compelled them to abide by the non-importation agreement.
Parliament finally responded to the protests by repealing the Townshend taxes in 1770, except for the tea duty, which Prime Minister Lord North kept to assert "the right of taxing the Americans".
This partial repeal of the taxes was enough to bring an end to the non-importation movement by October 1770.
From 1771 to 1773, British tea was once again imported into the colonies in significant amounts, with merchants paying the Townshend duty of three pence per pound.
Boston was the largest colonial importer of legal tea; smugglers still dominated the market in New York and Philadelphia.
Parliament announced in April 1764 when the Sugar Act was passed that they would also consider a stamp tax in the colonies.
Although opposition to this possible tax from the colonies was soon forthcoming, there was little expectation in Britain, either by members of Parliament or American agents in Great Britain such as Benjamin Franklin, of the intensity of the protest that the tax would generate.
Stamp acts had been a very successful method of taxation within Great Britain.
It generated over £100,000 in tax revenue with very little in collection expenses.
By requiring an official stamp on most legal documents, the system was almost self-regulating – a document without the required stamp would be null and void under British law.
Imposition of such a tax on the colonies had been considered twice before the Seven Years' War and once again in 1761.
Grenville had actually been presented with drafts of colonial stamp acts in September and October 1763, but the proposals lacked the specific knowledge of colonial affairs to describe adequately the documents subject to the stamp.
At the time of the passage of the Sugar Act in April 1764, Grenville made it clear that the right to tax the colonies was not in question, and that additional taxes, including a stamp tax, might follow.
The Glorious Revolution had established the principle of parliamentary supremacy.
Control of colonial trade and manufactures extended this principle across the ocean.
Although this belief had never been tested on the issue of colonial taxation, the British assumed that the interests of the thirteen colonies were too disparate to make joint colonial action against such a tax likely – an assumption that had its genesis in the failure of the Albany Conference in 1754.
By the end of December 1764 the arrival from the colonies of pamphlets and petitions protesting both the Sugar Act and the proposed stamp tax provided the first warnings of serious colonial opposition.
For Grenville, the first issue was the amount of the tax.
Soon after his announcement of the possibility of a tax, he had told American agents that he was not opposed to the Americans suggesting an alternative way of raising the money themselves.
However the only other alternative would be to requisition each colony and allow them to determine how to raise their share.
This had never worked before, even during the French and Indian War, and there was no political mechanism in place that would have ensured the success of such cooperation.
On February 2, 1765 Grenville met with Benjamin Franklin, Jared Ingersoll from Philadelphia, Richard Jackson the agent for Connecticut, and Charles Garth the agent for South Carolina (Jackson and Garth were also members of Parliament) to discuss the tax.
These colonial representatives had no specific alternative to present; they simply suggested that the determination be left to the colonies.
Grenville replied that he wanted to raise the money "by means the most easy and least objectionable to the Colonies" and Thomas Whately, who had drafted the Stamp Act, said the delay in implementation had been "out of Tenderness to the colonies" and the tax was judged as "the easiest, the most equal and the most certain.
"The debate in Parliament began soon after this meeting.
Petitions submitted by the colonies were officially ignored by Parliament.
In the debate Charles Townshend said, "...and now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they are grown to a degree of strength and opulence, and protected by our arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from heavy weight of the burden which we lie under?"
This led to Colonel Isaac Barré’s response: 
 (Year 1765).
The Stamp Act of 1765 (short title Duties in American Colonies Act 1765; 5 George III, c. 12) was a direct tax imposed by the British Parliament on the colonies of British America.
The American colonies were furious and refused to pay for the tax that the British put on them.
The Americans in all 13 colonies protested strongly and the British retreated part way, but insisted on the right of Parliament to tax the colonies.
The Americans rejected that as unconstitutional—declaring "No Taxation without Representation"—and it was a major grievance that led to the American Revolution.
The act required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London and carrying an embossed revenue stamp.
These printed materials were on every legal document, magazine, newspaper and many other types of paper used throughout the colonies.
Unlike previous taxes, the stamp tax had to be paid in valid British currency, not in colonial paper money.
The purpose of the tax was to help pay for troops stationed in North America after the British victory in the Seven Years' War.
The British government felt that the colonies were the primary beneficiaries of this military presence, and should pay at least a portion of the expense.
The Americans saw no need for the troops or the taxes; the British saw colonial defiance of their lawful rulers.
The Stamp Act met great resistance in the colonies.
It managed to offend virtually every colonist.
The colonies sent no representatives to Parliament, and therefore had no influence over what taxes were raised, how they were levied, or how they would be spent.
Many colonists considered it a violation of their rights as Englishmen to be taxed without their consent—consent that only the colonial legislatures could grant.
The thought of a British army stationed permanently on American soil alarmed many colonists.
Colonial assemblies sent petitions and protests.
The Stamp Act Congress held in New York City, reflecting the first significant joint colonial response to any British measure, also petitioned Parliament and the King.
Local protest groups, led by colonial merchants and landowners, established connections through correspondence that created a loose coalition that extended from New England to Georgia.
Protests and demonstrations initiated by the Sons of Liberty often turned violent and destructive as the masses became involved.
Some opponents of the Stamp Act distinguished between "internal" taxes like the stamp duty, which they claimed Parliament had no right to impose, and revenue legitimately raised through the regulation on trade.
Since Americans were unrepresented in the House of Commons, "No taxation without representation" became their rallying cry.
A word used frequently by colonists was "liberty" during the Stamp Act.
Opponents of the new tax staged mock funerals in which "liberty's" coffin was carried to a burial ground.
They insisted that liberty could not be "taken away without consent."
 1766 Grenville, unpopular with the king, was dismissed when the Rockingham Whigs agreed to form a government under Prime Minister Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham.
Rockingham's government successfully repeals the unpopular Stamp Act on condition that the Declaratory Act is passed, which asserted the right of Parliament to pass laws in the American colonies.