“How the British Empire tried to enforce obedience through Taxation”
Any historical event with-world changing consequences will always have two sides to the story. What most Americans refer to today as the American Revolution is no different. As Americans, most of us view eighteenth-century England as a tyrannical power across the ocean, and see men like George Washington as heroes who fought against the oppressor. If history and wars were that simple, everyone would understand them, and the need for wars would be diminished. The truth is, England was not as tyrannical to the colonies as one would have thought. Actually, the rebels had no idea, nor any intention of establishing a new and separate government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” They only meant to make a statement and attempt to avoid every tax that Parliament could dream up in the process. Across the Atlantic Ocean in England’s Parliament, some men such as William Pitt and Edmund Burke understood opposition to taxes by the American colonists. After all, the colonies had been all but ignored by England since they were established in the early part of the seventeenth century up until the Seven-Year War (1756 – 1763).
Other men such as George Greenville and Charles Townshend failed to understand the protests against any taxes implemented by Parliament. These men felt that this was not only the right of Parliament to demand taxes, but also their duty to raise money for the Crown. Parliament had the power to demand a tax of every British citizen in the empire, and these men had developed their own ideas about how those taxes would be implemented. These ideas were expressed through the Revenue Act of 1763 (later called the Sugar Act) and the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767, and still later a new set of acts that are referred to as the Intolerable Acts of 1774. All of these acts were protested in America and, eventually, the authority of Parliament in the American colonies came to be questioned by the colonists. In the mid-eighteenth century, the previously mentioned members of Parliament took their sides and faced the opposition from the colonies head on. The days of ignoring the rebellious colonies were over. The Colonist?s could not see England?s authority over them past the governor, if they could see it extending that far. “The colonies were [clearly] not a normal part of the British structure.” [1].
The Term Paper on American Colonies And In England War Men Man
If we compare the present with the past, if we trace events at all epochs to their causes, if we examine the elements of human growth, we find that Nature has raised us to what we are, not by fixed laws, but by provisional expedients, and that the principle which in one age effected the advancement of a nation, in the next age retarded the mental movement, or even destroyed it altogether. War, ...
They were not included in any day-to-day discussions in Parliament, and if any laws affecting the colonists did change, it would take them a minimum of three weeks to reach the shore of their continent across the ocean. On the flip side, when the Americans did know of laws regarding trade and taxes, it was not uncommon for them to smuggle the goods to avoid paying any taxes that may have been attached to the products. This attitude was clearly a threat to England’s relationship with her colonies. Edmund Burke, a Whig in Parliament, pointed out that any quick and definite taxing of the colonies after having allowed them to govern themselves for so long would cause a great many objections from the colonists. This would probably have been the best method, to convince the colonies that they were subject to the powers of parliament. Easing the colonies back into accepting and obeying all of the acts passed by British Parliament was not what most of the other members had in mind. A lot had changed concerning Parliament’s attitude toward the colonies since the Seven Years War. The Seven Years War was fought primarily on the continent of America, and when it ended in 1763, the colonists were the ones that benefited the most from it.
Throughout the Seven Years War (1756 – 1763), the English government continually supplied the colonies with British troops to protect them from the French as well as the Indians who had taken sides with the French. These troops remained in America even after the French had surrendered their holdings in Canada to Great Britain. Their continued presence was to protect the colonists from Indian invasions as well as French retaliation along the borders. In all, the English Crown incurred $2 million in debt while fighting against the French and protecting the colonies. Along with all of the money spent to protect these colonies, there were still about ten thousand troops remaining in American every year. The colonies had, and still were, reaping the benefits of being citizens of the British Empire while Great Britain was flipping the bill. George Grenville, the Prime Minister of Parliament in 1763, did not appreciate the fact that England was paying the bill for the protection of the American colonists while they were gaining so much from the placement of troops there. In 1763, the time had come to pay the piper, and the most logical way to do this was by taxing the American colonies.
The Essay on Stamp Act Colonists Tea Tax
a) The Proclamation of 1763 did not let people settle west of the Appalachian Mountains. It also made fur traders to obtain the king's permission to enter the territory. The Stamp Act put taxes on any printed material such as newspapers, advertisements, playing cards, and legal documents. This act angered the colonists. This act was passed without the colonists' approval. The Duty taxed foreign ...
The Revenue Act, which came to be the Sugar Act, was actually an extension of an act from 1733 called the Molasses Act. The Molasses Act required a tariff on all sugar products imported into America from the West Indies. The American colonists, however, had found that it was not difficult at all to smuggle sugar items into the colonies and avoid the tariff. Smuggling was illegal in British Empire, and Lord Grenville saw no reason why it should be permitted in the colonies. The colonies were lightly taxed compared to the rest of the British Empire. American colonists “paid no more than sixpence a year against the average English taxpayer’s twenty-five shillings” [2]. The price of sugar products was actually lowered through this act because the tariff was removed and “the duty on foreign molasses imported into the British colonies was reduced from sixpence to three pence”[3]. Instead of enjoying this reduction in the cost, the colonists boycotted the purchase of sugar purchases. The colonist’s believed if they accepted this tax then they would succumb to Parliamentary control on the issue of taxation. It would also allow Parliament to flex its authority over the colonies at will.
The colonists did not raise the necessary funds, and a new act became implemented. This act required a tax on a wide range of paper products. Including everything from legal documents, to marriage license’s, shipment invoices, land deeds, and even to common items, such as a deck of cards and practically everything in between. The new law was the Stamp Act of 1765. This was despised even more than the Sugar Act that had preceded it, and this caused even more rebellion in the colonies. Parliament forced yet again to deal with an unpleasant situation involving the colonies. The debates on how to handle this particular rebellion were even more heated than the previous ones involving the Revenue Act. Benjamin Franklin spoke to Parliament concerning “The Stamp Act.” He mentioned that the taxes that the colonists hated so much were the internal taxes, and that is exactly what the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act were. However, if there were an external tax, then the colonists, according to Franklin, would more readily pay it and not be so ready to rebel. This idea sparked even more debate. Lord Grenville, along with other members of parliament [could] not understand the difference between external and internal taxes.
The Essay on Stamp Act Tax Colonists House
The Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765. The new tax was imposed on All-American colonists and required them to ... that anyone supporting the right of Parliament to tax Virginians should be considered an enemy of the colony. The House of Burgesses defeated ...
The Stamp Act was doomed from the start. Due to the angry mobs and the “Son?s of Liberty,” there was not a royal official in the colony that was willing to enforce this particular act. Many colonists stopped buying English goods in protest of both acts, the boycott spread rapidly. Under great economic pressure, England repealed The Stamp Act. Grenville again became devastated by the failure of his plan to make the colonists pay taxes. He began to worry about the outright refusal of the rebels to pay. He even said that he “[doubted] that they [bordered] on open rebellion . . . [and feared] they would loose that name to take that of a revolution” [4]. In his disappointment at the failure of both of his plans, Grenville had no way of knowing how true his words would ring in just a few years. Lord Grenville lost the seat of Prime Minister in 1765, but it was not because his plans to get American colonists to pay their taxes had failed. It was more because most men agreed with King George III, he once mentioned, (That Grenville was an “insufferable bore”).
And that “he would rather have the Devil as a visitor of Buckingham Palace than to be forced to listen to George Grenville” [5]. Grenville did, however, remain in Parliament and voted to tax the colonies every chance he had. The Sugar Act and the Stamp Act had failed to gain revenue from the American colonists, British Parliament was still devising plans of how the Americans would be convinced to pay. William Pitt, the earl of Chatham proposed that the “The East India Company should pay an annual rental to the government. And that the dividend policy of the East India Company should be regulated by the government to prevent speculation in the company’s stocks. [Furthermore], revenues from the East India Company could have made up the national deficit and averted the taxation issues with the American colonies”[6]. This bill, however, was refused. The bold refusal of the American colonists was a slap in the face for Parliament, and it was far from forgotten. A plan to repay the debt was not enough. Parliament wanted a plan that would convince the colonists to pay their taxes. This particular test became a challenge, and in 1767, Charles Townshend, a man seeking popularity, took that challenge.
The Term Paper on Stamp Act England Colonies British
... the colonists. The Stamp Act was repealed in 1766. At the same time, however, Parliament declared that it had full power to tax the colonies ... colonial opposition must not go unchallenged. The Five "Intolerable Acts" Parliament replied to the Boston Tea Party with the five "punitive,"coercive," or "intolerable" ...
Townshend decided that the best way to increase his popularity was to get the American colonists to obey Parliament and pay their taxes peacefully, quietly, and in orderly fashion. In order to do this; he took into consideration the speech that Franklin had delivered several years earlier. Franklin had said that internal taxes were too cumbersome, and that the people in the colonies would always oppose an internal tax. An external tax, however, would be treated with a bit more respect in the colonies — or at least, that is what Parliament was led to believe. Townshend wanted to be the man who extracted the desired taxes from the colonies, so he devised a plan, which would involve an external tax. He decided that in “expressing their aversion to the internal taxes such as the Stamp Act, [the Americans] had admitted the validity of Britain’s right to impose duties”[7]. The Townshend Acts first involved the old Navigation Laws, which were “traditional commercial regulations. They were the corner stone of British colonial policy; they protected and promoted imperial commerce, to the benefit of the mother country and colonies alike. The colonists had admitted many times that they did not mind paying a tariff, which meant to regulate trade.
They thought that tariffs were necessary for the success of any country. To placate the colonists as well as Parliament, Townshend said that the external “duties when collected would be applied to the support of civil government in the colonies and any residue would be sent to England”[8]. If this plan worked, they were finally going to regain control. The Townshend Acts that caused so much trouble in 1767 “proposed imposts on glass, paper, pasteboard, painters’ supplies, and tea”[9]. This time, the colonists were so serious about the new tax that they signed a pact amongst themselves stating that they would not purchase any goods coming to the colonies from England. When these tariffs were protested in the colonies, England began to feel as though “The colonial merchants were demanding in effect free trade . . . or [at least] easy smuggling”[10]. Free trade was something that England did not even have. All Englishmen paid their taxes. There was no one in the British Empire, who was exempt from taxes. The realization that colonies would never willingly pay their taxes to the British Crown turned out to be “the beginning of the end”[11].
The Essay on Mother Country Colonists Colonies Britain
... Act in 1766. Many people were outraged at the fact that Britain could tax the colonies without being represented in the Parliament. Colonists ... began the colonists thinking about political independence from England. Within a year of repealing the Stamp Act, the Parliament passed another ... farmers were forced to sell their tobacco only to England where they were promised a monopoly, but over time ...
The reason for this is the Townshend Acts. Through the Townshend Acts, the colonists were being pinched, and even the English merchants were feeling the squeeze all the way across the Atlantic. “The boycott on British goods, particularly tea, threatened the livelihood of many English merchants. The colonists were not going to allow themselves to be taxed. The Townshend Acts were loosing support because of the economic impact in England, and Parliament was running out of ideas. The Townshend Acts was repealed late in 1767, but the damage was done. One law did remain intact and that was the Tea Act. This act remained because Parliament wanted to keep the Tea Act for the sake of principle. This left a sore spot for the colonists. The colonists continued to despise the British rule, and eventually acted upon that hatred, which gained a new set of acts for their trouble.
In an attempt to convince the colonists to adhere to the laws of Parliament yet again, the Tea Tax was lowered once more. Tea was now less expensive in the colonies that it was in England. The tax on tea had been a continual irritant in the colonies, and on December 16, 1773, the famous Boston Tea Party expressed the dislike of British rule. All of the tea, which had been left on the merchant ships, was dumped into the Boston Harbor in response to the tax on tea. Of course, Parliament could not allow this type of rebellion; the destruction of property, to go unpunished, so a new set of laws was created. The news of the Boston Tea Party reached Parliament in early 1774. The members of Parliament, as well as King George III, were outraged. There was no way that this display of disobedience by the colonists was going to go unpunished. They had wasted more than 400 cases of tea, and someone was going to have to pay for that destruction of property. In response to the constant insubordination of the colonists, King George III himself approved of measures that were going to force the colonists into submission. As a result of the king’s approval, Parliament enacted four new laws and updated an old one.
The Essay on Stamp Act British Parliament Colonists
... Stamp act was repealed, the Declaratory Act was introduced to the colonists. The Act stated that Parliament had complete and total authority over the colonies. It ... but would accept external tax. The British then placed a tax on lead, glass, paper, paint, and tea. This enraged colonist, so intern they ...
These new laws were the Boston Port Bill; the Administration of Justice Act; the Massachusetts Government Act; the Quebec Act; and the updating of the Quartering Act, [12]. The colonists would know them as the Intolerable Acts. It was the intention of Parliament at the time of these acts to force the colonists to obey the laws and pay the taxes that they were avoiding. The first of these laws enacted in 1774 was meant as a direct punishment for the “Boston Tea Party.” The Boston Port Bill “was a personal policy of the king who [had] regretted that he had been so easy with the colonies”[13]. Lord North, the Prime Minister at the time, presented this bill to Parliament. They, with the approval of the king, closed all of the ports in Boston and ordered that they remain closed until payment of the tea was made. This act alone would be detrimental to the Boston economy. Their expectations however, were not met. In order to regain control in the colonies, Parliament decided that the royal officials in the American colonies needed some form of protection from the unfair legal prosecution and angry mobs. Therefore, they created another new law, the Administration of Justice Act, which demanded that any British officials tried for crimes would be extradited to England.
Four days later, there would be another motion made by Parliament to punish the colonies. The Quartering Act of 1765 was revised for the final punishment for the colonists. Previously, the colonists were required to only to supply the soldiers stationed in America with unoccupied buildings for shelter and some food provisions. The revision demanded that the hospitality offered to the soldiers be extended to the point of colonists taking the soldiers into their own homes. The colonists did not get along well with the troops to begin with, so this revision was especially despised. These acts were important to England because they enforced obedience (in theory only) from the rebelling colonists. These new acts became very important to the colonists, the very right of Parliament enforcing any laws and taxes upon them, since they had no representation in Parliament.
“No Taxation without Representation” became the colonists’ next attempt at avoiding the laws of England. William Pitt, who had been sympathetic with the colonists and had said many times that they should have not been taxed, never said that England could not tax the colonies. That power was evident. When he asked that Parliament not tax the colonists, he reminded them that while he was opposing the taxes, he “at the same time, [asserted] the authority of this kingdom”[14]. What he and the rest of the British government began to face was the question of the supremacy of Great Britain. Either they ruled the colonies completely and totally, or they did not rule the colonies at all. The trouble was every Member of Parliament and even the king could see where the cards were falling on this particular issue. Great Britain was not ruling the colonies at all. They had challenged the authority of Parliament at every turn, and this latest question of authority based on representation was another excuse to avoid the laws. It was pointed out by Soame Jenyns, another member of Parliament at this time, that the colonists themselves even admitted that even if they were directly represented in Parliament, that they believed it would still have no right to impose taxes upon them and then use that money because “it would be an unjust tax.
[The tax would] not be equal on all, and if it [was] not equal, it [could] not be just, and if it [was] not just, no power whatever [could] impose it.” Jenyns thought this type of logic was absurd, because “no tax can be imposed exactly equal on all”[15]. A new face in Parliament, Charles James Fox, supported this argument in his speech by saying “there is not an American but who must reject and resist the principle and right of our taxing them. The question then, is shortly this: Whether we ought to govern America on these principles? Can this country gain strength by keeping up such a dispute as this? Tell me when America is taxed, to relieve the burthens of this country”[16]. William Pitt again took the stand that Englishmen were only supposed to be taxed by their own consent. Men brought a new question before him in his opposition, including Lord North, the new Prime Minister of Parliament. What was consent? Was this supposed to mean the consent of the people themselves or the men, which have been chosen to represent them, or the majority of their representatives? [17]. This became a question that was examined not only for the colonists, but the people in England as well.
After all, “Every man in England [was] taxed, and not one in twenty [was] represented”[18], but they continued to pay their taxes. It came to be argued that if common men in England were “virtually” represented and they paid their taxes, then the colonists were also “virtually” represented, then they could not be liberated from their taxes. William Pitt again took a stand and to this argument he responded by saying that “the idea of a virtual representation of America in this House [was] the most contemptible that [had] ever entered into the head of man. It [did] not deserve a serious refutation”[19]. The debates went on and on, but one detail seemed to be lost in all of the arguments that were presented. If the colonies did not respect the power of Parliament, then who was actually governing America? With all of the debating that went on in Parliament over the challenge of their power in America, the question always came back to one single problem. It did not matter what laws were enacted if the colonists did not adhere to them. Edmund Burke reminded everyone in Parliament that “a great black book and a great many red coats [would] never be able to govern [America]”[20].
Truer words may have never been spoken in Parliament. The men in that room may have enacted the laws, but the military was what England depended upon to defend and uphold her policies. Burke and Pitt and their supporters could see that England was not going to be able to force America back into obedience, while others maintained that they either had the right to tax the colonies or they did not. 1774 had diminished the number of men in Parliament who sympathized with the situation faced by people in America. It was certainly the right of Parliament to tax the colonies for their debt incurred by the Seven Years War, but none of the policies was doing anything to help collect revenues in the amount needed to pay England?s debts. Parliament had attempted to retrieve the money that the colonists owed for the protection they had received during the war and the stationing of the troops there ever since. Their method for regaining the funds that had been spent on America’s behalf was always a tax of some sort or another. When Lord Grenville’s internal taxes were not welcome in the colonies, they were repealed. In their place, Charles Townshend attempted to collect payments for that same debt though an external tax, which Benjamin Franklin had pointed out to Parliament as an alternative to the troublesome taxes.
This set of taxes failed as well, and Parliament began to realize that the colonists simply had no intention or desire whatsoever to pay any sort of tax to cover the cost of their protection. While William Pitt and Edmund Burke supported the position of the colonists’ refusal to pay these taxes, they maintained that Parliament did have the right to impose any taxes as well as other laws upon the colonists. The right to impose a law or a tax, however, came with no guarantee that it would be followed. That is what happened with all of the taxes that were imposed by Parliament upon the colonies. The colonists defied every act of Parliament and even questioned their right to be an authority over them. This forced the British government to enact even harsher laws where the colonists were concerned. Finally, when these laws were implemented, the colonists sparked a new debate as a last effort to avoid paying their taxes by saying that they were not represented in Parliament. The colonist?s were not directly represented in Parliament, but, as it had been pointed out, no Englishman was directly represented either. Men in England may have been able to claim representation, but, in reality, the population of Great Britain was so large and there were so few Parliamentary members, that “not one in twenty” people living in England was represented in Parliament [21].
Parliament never asked the colonists to pay a tax that they could not afford. In reality, they were asked to pay less for the items that they had already been purchasing. In theory, parliament thought that everyone in the British Empire had to pay a higher tax than what was asked of the colonies. This is not to mention that these taxes were going to be funding the continued protection the British colonists in America. The Seven Years War, which benefited the colonists, was extremely expensive. It had become a burden for the British Crown to pay the bill for the thousand?s of soldiers that had to be stationed in the colonies. The colonists, in reality, were only asked to pay for their fair share of the protection that benefited them, (Which was the majority of the bill).
Parliament not only had every right as the sovereign power of the British Empire to ask the tax of the colonists, but it was also their duty to keep the Crown from going bankrupt. How enjoyable it would be if Parliament could see how powerful and influential the United States has become in lieu of all of their attempts to collect taxes, through the use of sovereignty and bullying tactics. For them to see now what the “uncontrollable and rebellious American colonist’s” have achieved, without parliamentary ways and the England crown. If only English Parliament could see us now, this would definitely be most satisfying, to the early leaders of our great nation.
1 Ubbelohde, Carle. The American Colonies and the British Empire:1607 – 1763. (Arlington Heights, Ill. Davidson Inc, 1975) 2 2. Hibbert, Christopher. Redcoats and Rebels: The American Revolution through British Eyes. (New York, Avon Books, 1990) xviii. 3. Miller, John. Origins of the American Revolution. (Stanford, Stanford Univeristy Press, 1959) 101. 4. Grenville, George. In The American Revolution Through British Eyes. Ed Martin Kallick and Andrew MacLeish. (New York, Harper and Rowe, 1969) 101. 5. Hibbert, Christopher. Redcoats and Rebels. xvii – xviii. 6. Long J.C. George III: The Story of a Complex Man. (Boston, Mass, Little, Brown and Company, 1960), 178. 7. Lancaster, Bruce. The American Heritage Book of the American Revolution. (New York, 1958) 23. 10. Miller, John. The Origins of the American Revolution. 102. 11. Lancaster, Bruce. The American Heritage Book of the American Revolution. 23. 12. The Quartering Act had been in place since 1765, and was only updated in 1774. 14. Pitt, William. In The American Revolution Through British Eyes. Ed Martin Kallick and Andrew MacLeish. (New York, haper and Rowe, 1069) 366. 15. Jenyns, Soame In The American Revolution Through British Eyes.Ed Martin Kallick and Andrew MacLeish.
(NewYork, Harper and Rowe, 1969) 426. 16. Fox, Charles James. In The Spirit of Seventy-Six. Ed. Herny Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris. (New York: Evenston, 1967) 13 17. Jenyns, Soame. The American Revolution Through British Eyes. 423. 19. Pitt, William. The American Revolution Through British Eyes. 424. 20. Burke, Edmund. The Spirit of Seventy-Six. 15 21. Jenyns, Soame. The American Revolution through British Eyes. 424. 1. http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/E/sugar_stamp/actxx.htm 2. http://www.adw03.dial.pipex.com/peel/c-eight/stampact.htm 3. http://www.usconstitution.net/stamp.html 4. http://ahp.gatech.edu/townshend_act_1767.html 5. http://ahp.gatech.edu/quartering_act_1765.html 6. http://www.tax.org/museum/1756-1776.htm 7. http://ahp.gatech.edu/boston_port_act_1774.html 8. http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/laws/quartering.htm 9. http://www.tax.org/museum/Docs/440docs.htm 10. http://www.bartelby.org/225/0803.html
