During the mid-seventeenth century, the Parliament put upon acts on the colonists, that caused distraught throughout. Due to the Seven Years’ War, it created a huge debt for the British that needed to be taken care of quickly. In order to pay off the debt, the Parliament brought in the Sugar Act, Stamp Act, and Tea Act that impacted many colonists’ daily lives negatively. The Molasses Act of 1733 imposed a tax of six pence per gallon on molasses imported from non-British sources to British colonies. As Americans were using bribery and smuggling, the act was hard to enforce. For decades, many of them ignored the tax law, which inspired George Grenville to create the Revenue Act of 1764. Also known as the Sugar Act, it reduced the tax price …show more content…
The act applied a tax on all paper used for official documents, which caused a conflict between Britain and the colonies over the Parliament’s right to tax. Newspapers, pamphlets, court documents, licenses, wills, and ships’ cargo lists required a stamp to prove that the tax has been paid.”Unlike the Sugar Act, which regulated trade, the Stamp Act was designed plainly and simply to raise money” (141). A huge majority of the people were affected by this act, especially professions in the business and legal communities that used official documents. In April 1765, seven months before the Stamp Act was to take effect, eight colonial assemblies held discussions concerning the act. A number of resolutions were being discussed by the House of Burgesses. Patrick Henry thought of a series of resolutions to the Stamp Act that were debated and passed. Seven of them passed, known as the Virginia Resolves, and were printed. The first resolve stated that Virginians were considered as British citizens. The second resolve stated that they have the same rights and privileges as Britons. The third resolve was that self-taxation was one of the rights. The fourth resolution discussed about how Virginians were always taxed through their House of Burgesses representatives. The fifth and sixth resolve explained that the right of Virginia assembly had the right to tax the Virginians. The last resolve stated that those who oppose the …show more content…
Britain was finally receiving a moderate revenue from the colonies after putting this act in effect. The act helped decrease the amount of smuggling from American shippers and they were assumed to enjoy the external taxes. There were two types of taxes known as the internal and external taxes. The internal taxes meant that goods within the colonies and the property, such as the Stamp Act, were being taxed on. The external taxes meant that goods being brought into the colonies, like the Sugar Act, were being taxed on. Americans presumably agreed with the external taxes because they thought that external taxes were meant to regulate trade. Colonists did not liked the idea of the external taxes after finding out the real reason was to raise money and not to maintain trading. This led to a Philadelphia lawyer named John Dickinson to write an essay about his viewpoints of the Townshend Act. He strongly opposed of the act and said that the act made them no different from slaves, as they were being taxed without their approval. He highly believed Parliament did not have any rights to tax the colonists without permission. Also, the fact that the taxes were part of the salaries of royal governors. Massachusetts protesters led the protest upon Townshend taxes. A member of the provincial assembly, Samuel Adams, was against Parliament
British Parliament in 1765 passed the Stamp Act, taxation on newspapers, cards, almanacs, legal documents and all other paper documents. The act required the colonists to purchase stamps issued by the government for all documents. Colonists that incurred debt by purchasing British imports could no longer use paper currency used among colonial currency. British Merchants wanted payment in British pounds sterling, 1764 Currency Act, would forbid paper currency. The act put hardship and difficulty on colonists to pay taxes and outstanding debts.
The Sugar Act of 1764 (or Revenue Act) was an attempt to reduce the debt encountered by England after the Seven Years’ War. Prime Minister George Grenville was the one to enforce it. The problem was that merchants and gentry were not pleased with the Act. Consequently, they protested against it. In addition, another Act, called the Stamp Act, was declared a year later.
February 10, 1763 Treaty of Paris (French and Indian War) The end of the war has come. The seven years war started by the British declaring war against France. The French had been expanding into the Ohio Valley creating conflict amongst the countries. With the signing of the treaty France lost a lot of land.
In 1733, the English parliament passed the Molasses Act in order to promote profit for England. The act set a tax of six pence per gallon of any molasses that was imported by a foreign (non-English) power. This act, the predecessor of the sugar act, was weakly enforced and the colonists. Thus allowing molasses to be imported by bribes or smugglers.
The Tea Act of 1773 reinstated the issue of Britain’s right to tax the colonies. The Parliament and the colonies disagreed on a system of government in which the colonies would share the same rights and control as Parliament over their colonial affairs. Between 1773 and 1776, enormous amounts of tension between the center and the peripheries regarding the right to control the colonies led to the disintegration of the empire. The colonies and Parliament continued their dispute about the supremacy of the colonies that began with the Stamp Act of 1765.
This was alarming to the colonist because they familiar with the “no taxation without representation”. This Act resulted in a strong unified violent response from the colonists. The colonist issue was not with the tax itself, it was the fact that parliament was trying to tax them with no elected representatives in Parliament.
There were three primary goals of why the British planned to reform the colonial relations. The first goal was to eliminate the corruption of the royal officials and crack down on smuggling. The colonies were using smuggling as a way to avoid taxes. Therefore the British used this method as a way to tighten control. The second goal was the limits they placed on the colonist telling them where they could live.
Samuel Adams was a man of many occupations; he was a businessman, colonial activist, member of the Massachusetts legislature, and a protestor, but his occupation most important to the independence of the colonies was as a political leader. An influential politician in colonial Massachusetts, Adams was known to use propaganda to his advantage during the years before the American Revolution. Samuel Adams contributions to the Caucus Club, protests against British taxation, and founding of the Sons of Liberty made him essential to the early struggles for independence in the colonies. The Caucus Club was founded in 1719 as a powerful political force in the Massachusetts Colony.
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 pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. Ships papers legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed. The money collected by the Stamp Act was relatively small. What made the law so much its immediate cost but the standard it seemed to set.
The Stamp Act of 1765 (short title Duties in American Colonies Act 1765; 5 George III, c. 12) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that imposed a direct tax on the colonies of British America and required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp. Printed materials included legal documents, magazines, playing cards, newspapers, and many other types of paper used throughout the colonies.
This means that taxes from the people being protected needed to be paid. Such taxes were the Sugar Act, Stamp Act, and Townshend Act. Consequently, these acts were greatly dislike by the colonists,
Taxes implemented by British parliament (for example, the Sugar Act of 1764) had a significant role in the American Revolution, and they were passed predominantly because of the debt caused by the Seven Year’s
These tensions caused England to abandon its policy of salutary neglect, and reaffirm the power they had onto them once again. As Sylvanus, , once stated, “As the… inhabitants [of South Carolina] were debarr’d [forbidden/excluded] from giving their votes for members of the parishes [counties] in which… they reside… how and in what manner… can they be said to be represented by the General Assembly?... it is not paradoxical, that the frontier and interior inhabitants should pay duties and taxes impos’d on them by their fellow provincials, to which they have not given, or had their assent requir’d? And with what consistency can our assembly exercise such powers… when they deny such authority over themselves…”(A Political Problem, 1769) Sylvanus primarily explains through this excerpt that under the power of the British government [once Salutary Neglect had already been repealed], the colonists essentially had no say in what happened to them since they were not represented in the British parliament. Sylvanus went on to ponder over how possibly the British government could claim that the colonists were being represented in parliament when they weren’t and how unfair this was to the colonists.
The colonists wanted representation when it came down to being taxed, but the British government would not allow it. The government wanted full control over the people, so they made sets of acts and laws that were placed on taxation. For example, the Stamp Acts of 1765. These acts taxed all papers, pamphlets, newspapers, and cards. The Townshend Acts of 1767 were also a large part of taxation.
In result, economic changes would come to the colonies. Parliament met in 1763 and came to the conclusion that they were not receiving the profit they needed from the colonies (Document F). As a result, many taxes were passed by British Parliament upon the colonies, including the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act (Document H) and the Tea Act. The American colonies were not happy, to say the least. Americans protested, saying that these taxes were unnecessary and unfair.