Why Did the Colonists Object to the New Taxes in 1764 and Again in 1765

The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British Parliament. The deed, which imposed a revenue enhancement on all paper documents in the colonies, came at a fourth dimension when the British Empire was deep in debt from the 7 Years' War (1756-63) and looking to its North American colonies as a revenue source.

Arguing that only their own representative assemblies could tax them, the colonists insisted that the act was unconstitutional, and they resorted to mob violence to intimidate stamp collectors into resigning. Parliament passed the Stamp Act on March 22, 1765 and repealed it in 1766, only issued a Declaratory Act at the aforementioned time to reaffirm its authority to laissez passer whatever colonial legislation information technology saw fit. The bug of taxation and representation raised by the Stamp Human action strained relations with the colonies to the point that, 10 years later, the colonists rose in armed rebellion against the British.

Why The Stamp Act Was Passed

British Parliament passed the Postage Act to help replenish their finances after the plush Seven Years' War with France. Part of the revenue from the Postage Human action would exist used to maintain several regiments of British soldiers in N America to maintain peace between Native Americans and the colonists. Moreover, since colonial juries had proven notoriously reluctant to find smugglers guilty of their crimes, violators of the Stamp Act could exist tried and bedevilled without juries in the vice-admiralty courts.

Raising Revenue

The Seven Years' War (1756-63) ended the long rivalry betwixt France and Britain for command of N America, leaving Britain in possession of Canada and France without a basis on the continent. Victory in the war, withal, had saddled the British Empire with a tremendous debt. Since the war benefited the American colonists (who had suffered 80 years of intermittent warfare with their French neighbors) as much as anyone else in the British Empire, the British government decided that those colonists should shoulder part of the war'due south cost.

U.k. had long regulated colonial merchandise through a system of restrictions and duties on imports and exports. In the kickoff half of the 18th century, however, British enforcement of this system had been lax. Starting with the Sugar Act of 1764, which imposed new duties on saccharide and other goods, the British regime began to tighten its reins on the colonies. Shortly thereafter, George Grenville (1712-seventy), the British first lord of the treasury and prime minister, proposed the Stamp Act; Parliament passed the act without debate in 1765.

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Instead of levying a duty on trade goods, the Stamp Act imposed a direct taxation on the colonists. Specifically, the act required that, starting in the fall of 1765, legal documents and printed materials must bear a tax stamp provided by deputed distributors who would collect the tax in exchange for the stamp. The police force applied to wills, deeds, newspapers, pamphlets and even playing cards and die.

The Roots of Colonial Resistance

Coming in the midst of economic hardship in the colonies, the Postage stamp Act aroused fierce resistance. Although virtually colonists continued to have Parliament's authorization to regulate their merchandise, they insisted that only their representative assemblies could levy straight, internal taxes, such as the one imposed past the Postage Human action. They rejected the British government's argument that all British subjects enjoyed virtual representation in Parliament, even if they could not vote for members of Parliament.

The colonists also took exception with the provision denying offenders trials past jury. A vocal minority hinted at dark designs behind the Postage Human activity. These radical voices warned that the tax was office of a gradual plot to deprive the colonists of their freedoms and to enslave them beneath a tyrannical regime. Playing off traditional fears of peacetime armies, they wondered aloud why Parliament saw fit to garrison troops in North America just after the threat from the French had been removed. These concerns provided an ideological basis that intensified colonial resistance.

Colonists React to the Stamp Human action

An angry mob protestation against the Postage Human action by carrying a banner reading 'The Folly of England, the Ruin of America' through the streets of New York.

MPI/Getty Images

Parliament pushed forward with the Postage stamp Deed in spite of the colonists' objections. Colonial resistance to the act mounted slowly at first, only gained momentum as the planned date of its implementation drew near. In Virginia, Patrick Henry (1736-99), whose fiery orations confronting British tyranny would soon make him famous, submitted a serial of resolutions to his colony's assembly, the Business firm of Burgesses. These resolutions denied Parliament'south right to tax the colonies and called on the colonists to resist the Stamp Act.

Newspapers throughout the colonies reprinted the resolutions, spreading their radical message to a broad audience. The resolutions provided the tenor for the proclamations of the Stamp Act Congress, an extralegal convention composed of delegates from nine colonies that met in October 1765. The Stamp Act Congress wrote petitions to the king affirming both their loyalty and the conviction that but the colonial assemblies had the constitutional authority to tax the colonists.

While the Congress and the colonial assemblies passed resolutions and issued petitions confronting the Stamp Human activity, the colonists took matters into their own hands. The most famous popular resistance took place in Boston, where opponents of the Postage Human activity, calling themselves the Sons of Freedom, enlisted the rabble of Boston in opposition to the new police. This mob paraded through the streets with an effigy of Andrew Oliver, Boston's stamp distributor, which they hanged from the Liberty Tree and beheaded earlier ransacking Oliver's home. Oliver agreed to resign his commission every bit stamp benefactor.

Similar events transpired in other colonial towns, as crowds mobbed the postage distributors and threatened their concrete well-beingness and their property. Past the get-go of 1766, most of the stamp distributors had resigned their commissions, many of them under duress. Mobs in seaport towns turned abroad ships conveying the postage stamp papers from England without allowing them to discharge their cargoes. Determined colonial resistance made it incommunicable for the British government to bring the Stamp Act into effect. In 1766, Parliament repealed it.

The Postage stamp Act'due south Legacy

The finish of the Stamp Human activity did non terminate Parliament's conviction that information technology had the authority to impose taxes on the colonists. The British government coupled the repeal of the Stamp Human action with the Declaratory Act, a reaffirmation of its ability to laissez passer whatsoever laws over the colonists that it saw fit. However, the colonists held house to their view that Parliament could not tax them. The problems raised by the Stamp Deed festered for 10 years before giving rise to the Revolutionary War and, ultimately, American independence.

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Source: https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/stamp-act

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