US History Seven Year War

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US History Seven Year War

Date Added: September 24, 2008 10:55:03 AM

The seven year war as well as military presence for colonial protection left a huge debt for England which prompted Prime Minister George Grenville to research ways to increase revenue. His investigation showed that the Molasses act was hard to enforce and officers responsible for collecting the duties from ships found it easy to engage in bribery and smuggling. Customs officer pay was many times more than the collected revenue from duties and Grenville found this a logical place to focus. His solution was the Sugar Act which lowered the duty on molasses and raised the penalty for dishonesty as well as increased accounting practices. The British felt that the Sugar Act was a reasonable solution for administering Colonial protection, however, the Americans were disturbed over the increased British supervision and an intrusion of their Colonial affairs.

Grenville, who still had not reduced national debt, upped the ante with the Stamp Act which taxed paper used for legal documents, newspapers and the like. Each document required proof that the tax had been paid by way of an affixed stamp. This Act was solely for the purpose of increasing revenue and did not sit well with Americans as this was the first tax that impacted them directly. American’s felt that Parliament had revoked their right to tax themselves and were especially angry that they were not represented before Parliament. Historically in England, taxes were gifts to the Monarch granted by their representatives and American’s expected this representation. Parliament’s position was that American’s were represented by the House of Commons who represent all Britain’s near and far. Resistance of the Stamp Act was widespread with demonstrations and destruction.

American’s were furious over the taxation issues and their inability to govern themselves. Merchants and politicians were concerned over the chaos growing and put pressure on Parliament to get rid of the Stamp Act. In 1766, Parliament finally repealed the Stamp Act but also passed the Declaratory Act which gave Parliament the right to legislate everything for the colonies. This was intended as an iron fist approach but was received as bullying and therefore not effective in controlling the rebellious Americans.

In 1767, Chancellor Townshend proposed the Revenue Act which established duties on imports such as tea, glass, lead, paper and paint. The duties were not as upsetting to Americans as was the principle of taxation. They felt that all tax was simply meant to raise money for British interest and this was fueled by the fact that some of the proceeds from the tax would be used for royal governor salaries. In the past, local assemblies handled these issues giving them more influence over who was appointed to positions by the monarch. The Massachusetts assembly created a letter arguing their points but the response was instructions to the governor to disband the assembly. This was upsetting to Bostonians and as word traveled many towns enacted nonconsumption agreements. Moral deteriorated and decreased trade caused the repeal of the Revenue Act of 1767 before it even got started.

It seems logical that Parliament would need a revenue increase to cover the cost of war as well as the protection from foreign enemies; however, taxation without representation was sure to cause rebellion and discontent. Parliament underestimated colonial independence and they were at a loss as to how handle the rebellious Americans. They attempted many solutions to generate revenue but all fueled the discontent. Perhaps limited communications caused relatively small problems to snowball into mountains. This could also explain why American’s had to go to such extremes for their voices to be heard. With each Act that Parliament imposed, the American people became more unified, more organized and certainly more determined to be heard. Whatever the reason for disconnect, the American reaction to taxation without proper representation was certainly justified.

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