Stamp Act 1765
The Stamp Act 1765, also known as the Duties in American Colonies Act 1765, was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain which imposed a direct tax on the British colonies in America and required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper from London which included an embossed revenue stamp. Printed materials included legal documents, magazines, playing cards, newspapers, and many other types of paper used throughout the colonies, and it had to be paid in British currency, not in colonial paper money.
The purpose of the tax was to pay for British military troops stationed in the American colonies after the French and Indian War, but the colonists had never feared a French invasion to begin with, and they contended that they had already paid their share of the war expenses. Colonists suggested that it was actually a matter of British patronage to surplus British officers and career soldiers who should be paid by London.
The Stamp Act 1765 was very unpopular among colonists. A majority considered it a violation of their rights as Englishmen to be taxed without their consent—consent that only the colonial legislatures could grant. Their slogan was "No taxation without representation". Colonial assemblies sent petitions and protests, and the Stamp Act Congress held in New York City was the first significant joint colonial response to any British measure when it petitioned Parliament and the King.
One member of the British Parliament argued that the American colonists were no different from the 90-percent of Great Britain who did not own property and thus could not vote, but who were nevertheless "virtually" represented by land-owning electors and representatives who had common interests with them. Daniel Dulany, a Maryland attorney and politician, disputed this assertion in a widely read pamphlet, arguing that the relations between the Americans and the English electors were "a knot too infirm to be relied on" for proper representation, "virtual" or otherwise. Local protest groups established Committees of Correspondence which created a loose coalition from New England to Maryland. Protests and demonstrations increased, often initiated by the Sons of Liberty and occasionally involving hanging of effigies. Very soon, all stamp tax distributors were intimidated into resigning their commissions, and the tax was never effectively collected.
Opposition to the Stamp Act 1765 was not limited to the colonies. British merchants and manufacturers pressured Parliament because their exports to the colonies were threatened by boycotts. The act was repealed on 18 March 1766 as a matter of expedience, but Parliament affirmed its power to legislate for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever" by also passing the Declaratory Act 1766. A series of new taxes and regulations then ensued—likewise opposed by the Americans. The episode played a major role in defining the 27 colonial grievances that were clearly stated within the text of the Indictment of George III section of the United States Declaration of Independence, enabling the organized colonial resistance which led to the American Revolution in 1775.
Background
The British victory in the Seven Years' War, known in the United States and elsewhere as the French and Indian War, was won at great financial expense. During the war, the British national debt nearly doubled, rising from £72,289,673 in 1755 to almost £129,586,789 by 1764. Post-war expenses were expected to remain high because the Bute ministry decided in early 1763 to keep ten thousand British regulars in the American colonies, which would cost about £225,000 per year, equal to £ million today. The primary reason for retaining such a large force was that demobilizing the army would put 1,500 officers out of work, many of whom were well-connected in Parliament. This made it politically prudent to retain a large peacetime establishment, but Britons were averse to maintaining a standing army at home so it was necessary to garrison most of the troops elsewhere.The outbreak of Pontiac's War in May 1763 led to the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the added duty of British soldiers to prevent outbreaks of violence between Native Americans and American colonists. 10,000 British troops were dispatched to the American frontier, with a primary motivation of the move being to provide billets for the officers who were part of the British patronage system. John Adams wrote disparagingly of the deployment, writing that "Revenue is still demanded from America, and appropriated to the maintenance of swarms of officers and pensioners in idleness and luxury".
George Grenville became prime minister in April 1763 after the failure of the short-lived Bute Ministry, and he had to find a way to pay for this large peacetime army. Raising taxes in Britain was out of the question, since there had been virulent protests in England against the Bute ministry's 1763 cider tax, with Bute being hanged in effigy. The Grenville ministry, therefore, decided that Parliament would raise this revenue by taxing the American colonists without their consent. This was something new; Parliament had previously passed measures to regulate trade in the colonies, but it had never before directly taxed the colonies to raise revenue.
Politicians in London had always expected American colonists to contribute to the cost of their own defence. So long as a French threat existed, there was little trouble convincing colonial legislatures to provide assistance. Such help was normally provided through the raising of colonial militias, which were funded by taxes raised by colonial legislatures. Also, the legislatures were sometimes willing to help maintain regular British units defending the colonies. So long as this sort of help was forthcoming, there was little reason for the British Parliament to impose its own taxes on the colonists. But after the peace of 1763, colonial militias were quickly stood down. Militia officers were tired of the disdain shown to them by regular British officers, and were frustrated by the near-impossibility of obtaining regular British commissions; they were unwilling to remain in service once the war was over. In any case, they had no military role, as the Indian threat was minimal and there was no foreign threat. Colonial legislators saw no need for the British troops.
The Sugar Act 1764 was the first tax in Grenville's program to raise a revenue in America, which was a modification of the Molasses Act 1733. The Molasses Act 1733 had imposed a tax of 6 pence per gallon on foreign molasses imported into British colonies. The purpose of the Molasses Act 1733 was not actually to raise revenue, but instead to make foreign molasses so expensive that it effectively gave a monopoly to molasses imported from the British West Indies. It did not work; colonial merchants avoided the tax by smuggling or, more often, bribing customs officials. The Sugar Act 1764 reduced the tax to 3 pence per gallon in the hope that the lower rate would increase compliance and thus increase the amount of tax collected. The act also taxed additional imports and included measures to make the customs service more effective.
American colonists initially objected to the Sugar Act 1764 for economic reasons, but before long they recognized that there were potential constitutional issues involved. The British Constitution guaranteed that taxes could not be levied without the consent of Parliament, but the colonists argued that due to their theoretical Rights as Englishmen, they could not be taxed without their consent, which came in the form of representation in Parliament. The colonists elected no members of Parliament, and so it was seen as a violation of their rights for Parliament to tax them. There was little time to raise this issue in response to the Sugar Act 1764, but it came to be a major objection to the Stamp Act 1765 the following year.
British decision-making
Parliament announced in April 1764 when the Sugar Act 1764 was passed that they would also consider a stamp tax in the colonies. Opposition from the colonies was soon forthcoming to this possible tax, but members of Parliament and American agents in Great Britain, including Benjamin Franklin, did not anticipate the intensity of the protest that the tax generated.Stamp acts had been a very successful method of taxation within Great Britain; they 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 would be null and void under British law without the required stamp. 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 adequately describe 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 might follow, including a stamp tax.
File:Joseph Siffrein Duplessis - Benjamin Franklin - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|Benjamin Franklin, who represented the Province of Pennsylvania in discussions about the act
The Glorious Revolution had established the principle of parliamentary supremacy. Control of colonial trade and manufactures extended this principle across the ocean. This belief had never been tested on the issue of colonial taxation, but the British assumed that the interests of the thirteen colonies were so disparate that a joint colonial action was unlikely to occur against such a tax—an assumption that had its genesis in the failure of the Albany Conference in 1754. By the end of December 1764, the first warnings of serious colonial opposition were provided by pamphlets and petitions from the colonies protesting both the Sugar Act 1764 and the proposed stamp tax.
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 2 February 1765, Grenville met to discuss the tax with Benjamin Franklin, Jared Ingersoll from New Haven, Richard Jackson, agent for Connecticut, and Charles Garth, the agent for South Carolina. 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". Thomas Whately had drafted the Stamp Act, and he said that the delay in implementation had been "out of Tenderness to the colonies", and that 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,
Colonel Isaac Barré's responded:
Massachusetts Royal Governor William Shirley assured London in 1755 that American independence could easily be defeated by force. He argued: