PARLIAMENTARY POLICIES
Did Parliamentary policies toward the
Thirteen Colonies after 1760 justify the
American call for independence?
Viewpoint: Yes. The colonial policies of Parliament violated Americans'
rights as Englishmen.
Viewpoint: No. Parliament was justified in tightening loopholes in its imperial
administration of the Thirteen Colonies and insisting that the Americans recognize its supremacy.
Between 1760 and 1774 Parliament passed a series of measures
designed to replace the old British colonial system, especially its lax enforcement of trade laws, with clearer policies and more-powerful enforcement
machinery. Encouraging Parliament to tighten its control was its belief that the
Americans had undermined British efforts in the French and Indian War
(1754-1763) by not supplying the troops requested by Whitehall, refusing to
comply with military impress orders, raising insufficient taxes, opposing the
quartering of soldiers, attacking recruiters and press gangs, harboring deserters, and even smuggling with the French. While Americans were profiting
from this illicit trade, the British were groaning from heavy tax burdens. By the
early 1760s the British were paying approximately one-third of their annual
incomes on taxes, compared with about 5 percent for the Americans. The
Ministry therefore thought it only fair for the lightly taxed Americans to pay
more for the administration of the colonies. To that end Parliament passed a
series of acts that sought to reduce smuggling (and thus help enable customs
officers to collect more money), to raise revenue through taxes, and to insist
that Americans recognize its supremacy.
The Americans were offended by these new imperial measures, which
they interpreted as signs of ministerial ingratitude. After all, they had provided
twenty-one thousand troops (about one-half the troops under British command) during the war. Instead of receiving greater respect from the home
government for their contributions to British victory, however, the colonials
were shocked with the stationing of ten thousand redcoats in North America,
increased taxes, restrictions on their ability to settle west of the Appalachian
Mountains and to print their own currency, and blanket searches of their property. Believing these acts violated both their constitutional and natural rights,
colonists throughout America opposed these "tyrannical" measures by every
means available to them—petition, economic boycott, threats, and violence.
An irritated Ministry responded with even more "coercive" measures, which
only served to galvanize American resistance.
230
These opposing perspectives on the Anglo-American dispute raise a
question that many American students, weaned on a super-patriotic diet of
their nation's past, find distasteful: Was Parliament's imperial policy toward
the colonies in the 1760s and early 1770s so unreasonable as to justify American resistance and calls for independence? Americans find this question disturbing because it challenges the justification for the founding of their nation
and the motives of the beloved Patriot leaders. For example, were the British
imperial measures imposed on the colonies really passed by a "despotic"
home government intent on "enslaving" Americans, as Patriot leaders
argued? Or were the Americans simply a bunch of spoiled ingrates who wanted to continue enjoying
the many benefits of living under British tutelage without having to contribute their fair share to the
Empire? Thus, were the Patriots' motives in resisting Parliamentary legislation magnanimous or
self-serving? Was the founding of the United States inspired by a noble or a selfish cause?
Viewpoint:
Yes. The colonial policies of
Parliament violated Americans'
rights as Englishmen.
When the Seven Years' War (1756-1763)
ended, Britons on both sides of the Atlantic
Ocean exulted in the victory that secured Great
Britain's status as the most powerful empire in
the Western world. Colonial British Americans
made substantial military and financial contributions to the victory and expected to assume a
more important place within the Empire after
the war. British authorities, beset with the challenges of administering a vastly expanded
Empire, had a different view. Between 1760 and
1774 the British government attempted to
tighten the administration of its colonies in
North America by imposing a series of unreasonable, restrictive administrative and legislative
measures. American colonists, accustomed to relatively lenient oversight, viewed the new policies
as abuses of the imperial relationship and of
their constitutional rights. Ultimately, repeated
threats to their constitutional rights led the Thirteen Colonies to declare their independence
from Great Britain in 1776.
In 1763 colonial Americans were proud
members of the powerful British Empire, and
they viewed British government as the best ever
created to protect individual liberties. Britain's
constitutional government was a balance among
three elements: monarchical, represented by the
King; aristocratic, represented by the House of
Lords; and democratic, represented by the
House of Commons. The constitutional balance
was delicate, however, and could easily be disrupted. In particular, many Britons feared that
the monarch and his ministers would corrupt
Parliament and that tyranny would result. Earlyeighteenth-century British opposition writers,
who emphasized how easily the government
could degenerate into tyranny, had a powerful
impact on the political thought of educated
Americans. During the 1760s and 1770s colonial
leaders became convinced that the King and his
ministers were conspiring to destroy the delicate
constitutional balance that protected their liberties and to institute despotism.
Great Britain was deeply in debt and faced
the mounting costs of administering a greatly
expanded postwar Empire. The British govern-
ment, led by George Grenville, was determined
to shift some of the costs of war and the financial burdens of empire to its American colonists.
Parliament passed several acts designed to raise
revenue from the colonists. The American Revenue Act (1764), more commonly known as the
Sugar Act, revised the Molasses Act, (1733),
which imposed a duty of six pence per gallon on
molasses imported into the colonies. Smugglers
regularly evaded the Molasses Act, and customs
officials rarely collected the duty. Under the
Sugar Act the duty was reduced to three pence,
but new customs officials were employed to
enforce the act and collect the tax. The Sugar
Act also levied new duties on other colonial
imports, including textiles, coffee, and indigo.
The following year Parliament passed another
measure, the Stamp Act (1765), which was
designed to raise even more revenue from the
colonists. The Stamp Act required colonists to
buy a government stamp each time that they
purchased printed materials or legal documents.
Because this tax targeted such a wide variety of
goods, it affected most of the colonists. When
news of passage of this legislation reached the
colonies, Americans protested on economic and
constitutional grounds Parliament's efforts to
levy these taxes.
Americans believed British efforts to
extract revenue from them were largely unreasonable. Parliament was attempting to tax the
colonists in part to pay the costs of the Seven
Years' War and its aftermath, but the British
did not appreciate contributions that Americans had made to the military effort during the
war. As Philadelphia printer and inventor Benjamin Franklin noted in his appearance before
Parliament in 1766, more than twenty thousand colonists fought alongside British regulars, and thousands more contributed directly
and indirectly to the cause. Although the British were resentful because some colonies had
not met their troop quotas, other colonies contributed beyond their means. Massachusetts's
contributions to the British war effort burdened its residents with high taxes and a huge
public debt that nearly bankrupted the province. Colonists faced a severe economic recession when wartime spending ended and they
were ill situated to pay the taxes that Parliament demanded. Other Parliamentary measures exacerbated the colonists' financial
difficulties. For example, in order to protect
British merchants from being paid in poten-
HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N
231
AN ENGLISHMAN AND HIS RIGHTS
In 1765 British politician Soame Jenyns made the following m^ponse to American arguments against the right of
Parliament to tax the Thirteen Colonies:
Island of Great Britain? If it can travel three
hundred miles, why not three thousand? ...
First then, that no Englishman is or can
be taxed but by his own consent as an individual; this is so far from being true, that it is
the very reverse of truth; for no man that I
know of is taxed by his own consent; and an
Englishman, I believe, is as little likely to be
so taxed, as any man in the world.
But it is urged, that the colonies are by
their charters placed under distinct Governments, each of which has a legislative power
within itself, by which alone it ought to be
taxed...
Secondly, that no Englishman is, or can
be taxed, but by the consent of those persons, whom he has chose to represent him;
for the truth of this I shall appeal only to the
candid representatives of those unfortunate
counties which produce cyder, and shall willingly acquiesce under their determination.
Lastly, that no Englishman is, or can be
taxed, without the consent of the majority of
those, who are elected by himself, and others
of his fellow-subjects, to represent them. This
is certainly as false as the other two; for
every Englishman is taxed, and not one in
twenty represented; copyholders, leaseholders, and all men possessed of personal property only, chuse no representatives;... yet
are they not Englishmen? Or are they not
taxed?
I am well aware that I shall hear Locke,
Sidney, Selden, and many other great names
quoted, to prove that every Englishman,
whether he has a right to vote for a representative or not, is still represented in the British
Parliament.,, I will ask one question..,
Why does not this imaginary representation
extend to America as well as over the whole
tially less-valuable currency, and even though
colonists faced a shortage of specie, Parliament
passed the Currency Act (1764), which
restricted the colonial assemblies from issuing
legal-tender paper money. Additionally, the
Proclamation of 1763, which temporarily prohibited settlement west of the Allegheny
Mountains, threatened to severely circumscribe
America's economic and physical expansion.
More important, colonists protested British efforts to tax them on constitutional
grounds. To be taxed only by their elected representatives was an important right Britons
enjoyed. The central issue became whether Par-
232
Their charters are undoubtedly no more
than those of all corporations, which
empower them to make bye-laws, and raise
duties for the purposes of their own police, for
ever subject to superior authority of parliament; ... and therefore they can have no
more pretence to plead an exemption from
this Parliamentary authority, than any other
corporation in England.
It has moreover been alleged, that,
though Parliament may have power to
impose taxes on the colonies, they have no
right to use it, because it would be an unjust
tax; and no supreme or legislative power can
have a right to enact any law in its nature
unjust: to this, I shall only make this short
reply, that if Parliament can impose no taxes
but what are equitable, and the persons
taxed are to be judges of that equity, they will
in effect have no power to lay any tax at all
[Why this argument] should not be used by
Englishmen on this side of the Atlantic, as
well as by those on the other side, I do not
comprehend.
Source; Soame Jenyns, "The Objections to the Taxation of Our American Colonies by the Legislature of
Great Britain, briefly considered" {London, 1765) in
The Works of Soame Jenyns, volume 2f edited by
Charles N. Cole (London: Cadell, 1790), pp. 189204.
liament had the right to tax the colonists or the
colonists could be taxed only by their colonial
assemblies. The Grenville ministry attempted to
support Parliament's prerogative by citing several precedents. Colonists rejected British
claims that precedents existed for such Parliamentary taxation because they insisted that raising revenue was not the primary purpose of the
earlier acts. The example most often cited, the
Post Office Act (1710), was effected to establish
a service, not raise a revenue, and the post office
did not generate surplus revenue until 1764.
Colonial leaders found other so-called precedents similarly flawed, including the Molasses
H I S T O R Y IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N
Act, which was primarily designed to regulate
trade. Clearly, before the 1760s Parliament had
not taxed the colonists for the express purpose
of raising revenue.
Colonists also rejected the flawed British
argument that Parliament had the right to tax
the colonies because although the colonies, like
parts of England, were not directly represented
in Parliament, they enjoyed virtual representation. Colonial leaders dismissed the specious
contention that members of Parliament represented the interests of all members of the
Empire, not only the local voters who elected
them. Instead, they argued that British and
American subjects did not consistently share
the same interests—acts that were "oppressive
and injurious" to the colonists could at the
same time be beneficial for residents of Great
Britain. Other colonial commentators noted
that only local representatives knew what type and
amount of taxes could reasonably be extracted
from their constituents. In response to the British
argument that even substantial communities in
England were not directly represented in Parliament, James Otis of Massachusetts replied: "To
what purpose is it to ring everlasting changes to
the colonists on the cases of Manchester, Birmingham and Sheffield, who return no members? If
those now so considerable places are not represented, they ought to be."
Colonial assemblies met and passed resolutions stating their opposition to Parliament's
efforts to tax the colonists. Virginia's representatives resolved that British efforts to undermine the colonial assemblies' exclusive right of
taxation were "illegal, unconstitutional, and
unjust, and had a manifest tendency to destroy
British as well as American liberty." Rhode
Island's representatives noted that the Stamp
Act was "a manifest violation of their just and
long enjoyed rights. For it must be confessed by
all men, that they who are taxed at pleasure by
others, cannot possibly have any property . . .
they who have no property can have no freedom, but are indeed reduced to the most abject
slavery." A general meeting of the colonies was
held in New York in October 1765. This Stamp
Act Congress resolved that "all supplies to the
Crown" were "free gifts of the people" and
"denied Parliament's authority to tax the colonies." In the face of these protests Parliament
relented and in 1766 repealed the Stamp Act,
but it also passed the Declaratory Act (1766)
that affirmed Parliament's right to legislate for
the Empire.
During the Stamp Act crisis, petitions
clearly indicated that the colonists objected to
all Parliamentary efforts to raise revenue by taxing the colonies and that they did not distinguish between internal and external taxes. Yet,
Britain's new Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Charles Townshend, deceptively suggested that
the colonists were dissatisfied with the prospect
of paying internal taxes only and would not
object to paying external taxes. Townshend proposed a new revenue measure, the Revenue Act
of 1767 (also known as the Townshend Act),
which imposed external rather than internal
taxes. The Townshend Act levied duties on common colonial imports, including paper, glass,
lead, tea, and paint. Until 1774 colonial leaders
did not deny Parliament's right to regulate
imperial trade, but they did not agree that Parliament could pass trade regulations that were
primarily designed to raise revenue. As Philadelphia lawyer John Dickinson wrote in Letters
from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767-1768), the
Townshend Act imposed taxes on goods that
the colonists could legally import only from
Great Britain. "If Great Britain can order us to
come to her for necessaries we want, and can
order us to pay what taxes she pleases before we
take them away, or when we land them here, we
are as abject slaves." The British relented again
by repealing the Townshend duties, except for
the duty on tea.
Colonists saw other signs of a grand British design to strengthen executive power,
weaken their representative assemblies, and
destroy their individual liberties in imperial
policies passed during the 1760s. The Sugar,
Stamp, and Townshend Acts all included provisions to send more royal officials to the colonies to enforce British policies. The revenue
raised from the new tax measures would pay
their salaries and the salaries of royal governors, who had previously been dependent on
the colonial assemblies for payment. Colonial
revenues would also pay for the standing army
of ten thousand soldiers that the British had
stationed in the colonies; under the Quartering
Act (1765) the colonists were forced to supply
the troops with food and housing. Colonists
understood that standing armies were the traditional tools that despots used to enforce their
tyrannical will, and British laws were forcing
them to pay and supply their potential oppressors. The legislation of the 1760s also provided
for the establishment of additional Vice-Admiralty
Courts and expanded their jurisdiction. These
courts operated without a jury, reinforced executive power, and diminished the power of people in the justice system. The press, which kept
people informed of infringements on their liberties, faced increasing challenges to its independence in Britain and America. The
placemen-dominated South Carolina council,
for example, prosecuted Thomas Powell in
1774 for printing a record of their proceedings.
Executive attacks on the freedom of the press
HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N
233
also occurred in New York and Massachusetts
during the late 1760s and early 1770s.
More ominous signs of Britain's commitment to destroying colonists' rights followed.
Designed to assist the failing East India Company, the Tea Act (1773) established for the company a monopoly on the sale of tea in the
colonies. Although colonists could purchase tea
more cheaply than before, they would still have
to pay a duty. Colonial protests against this insidious attempt to get Americans to pay British
taxes included refusing to unload the tea in New
York and Philadelphia and destroying the tea in
Boston. To punish Massachusetts for the Bostonians' actions, Parliament passed the Coercive
Acts (1774), which closed the port of Boston,
altered the Massachusetts charter by strengthening the power of royal officials at the expense of
the elected representative assembly, and allowed
any royal official who committed an offense in
the colony to stand trial in England instead of in
Massachusetts. Colonists correctly feared that
the tyrannical provisions of the Coercive Acts
might be extended beyond Massachusetts.
Americans believed that the Quebec Act
(1774) provided additional evidence of a British
conspiracy to establish tyranny in North America. The Act provided for the administration of
the North American territory that Britain
acquired from France after the Seven Years'
War. It expanded the territory of Quebec southward to the Ohio River and westward to the
Mississippi River and established an executive
government with a governor and council but
made no provision for an elected representative
assembly. Any colonists who moved to the territory would lose their right to representation.
Moreover, the Quebec Act allowed Roman
Catholics to practice their religion freely and
confirmed the privileges of the Catholic
Church, a religion that Protestant Britons
believed supported despotism by promoting
obedience to a foreign authority.
Between 1760 and 1774 imperial policies
provided ample evidence that the British were
conspiring to strengthen royal authority at the
expense of the colonists' constitutional rights.
Americans feared that the unreasonable British
actions were destroying the balance of the British constitution and would ultimately lead to
tyranny in the colonies. They believed that the
King and his ministers had corrupted Parliament and that it had become merely their tool.
Many influential British officeholders agreed
with the American leaders' assessment. In
response, Americans resisted unreasonable British policies in an effort to save the British constitution and the liberties it protected.
-KIM KLEIN,
SHIPPENSBURG UNIVERSITY
234
Viewpoint:
No. Parliament was justified in
tightening loopholes in its imperial
administration of the Thirteen
Colonies and insisting that the
Americans recognize its supremacy.
One of the most disturbing features of history teaching in American schools is the prevailing misconception that British rule leading up to
the American Revolution (1775-1783) was conspiratorial—that the motives and policies of
George III and his government were villainous
and tyrannical. Such views, while satisfying a
need for national self-righteousness and identity,
fall far short of the truth. British schools, less
prone to Jeffersonian influences, have focused
more on domestic affairs (Wilkesian radicalism
and the endless turnover of ministries), no doubt
because their country's imperial policies resulted
in abject defeat. Yet, the problem remains how
Americans could have interpreted the relatively
modest tax burdens imposed on them in the
1760s as an infringement of their constitutional
rights and as a justification for revolution.
In fact, the colonists were rebelling against
a system of government that was widely
regarded as the most liberal and tolerant in the
Western world. Within the context of the eighteenth century, the British Parliamentary system, shaped largely by the Glorious Revolution
(1688), struck an ideal balance between King,
Lords, and Commons and was admired for
bringing stability and prosperity through a judicious blend of freedom and order. The British
constitution provided the model for Baron de
Montesquieu's concept of checks and balances
in The Spirit of Laws (1748), and British social
norms inspired much praise from Voltaire during his exile from French absolutism in the
1720s. If the British system of political freedom
and religious toleration was attractive to so
many foreigners and to the vast majority of Britons, it seems incongruous that the American
colonists found it so oppressive.
A possible explanation is that most citizens
of the Thirteen Colonies in the century and a
half after the settlement at Jamestown (1607)
were refugees and misfits who fled political and
religious persecution in the Old World. This
quality was particularly evident in New England,
where no less than twenty thousand Puritans
sought refuge in the 1630s. Not surprising, radicalism was strongest here in the 1760s. Similar
settlements by outcast communities took place
in Pennsylvania under the Quakers and in Maryland under the Catholics, and there were many
other non-Anglican religious groups that spread
HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N
throughout the colonies, including the Presbyterian Scots-Irish, Anabaptist Germans, French
Huguenots, Dutch Reformers, Swedish Lutherans, and a smattering of Methodists and Jews.
Whereas Dissenters (non-Anglican Protestants)
made up less than 10 percent of England's population, they were clearly a majority in the American colonies. While Yankee Puritans took the
lead against Britain's taxation measures, the
Scots-Irish, known as frontiersmen and Indian
fighters, provided much of the ballast for the revolutionary cause. There were far more signers of
the Declaration of Independence (1776) and
leaders of the American Revolution from this
ethnic group than their numbers would justify.
Indeed, General George Washington once
remarked that if he ever had to make a last stand
for liberty, he wanted it to be with the
Scots-Irish of his native Virginia. Whether these
nonconformists were also more prone to violence is a moot point, but they did adhere to a
seventeenth-century interpretation of the constitution that was rooted in a belief in the commonand natural-law tradition rather than the concept
of Parliamentary supremacy and the rule of law
that had triumphed in Britain during the Glorious Revolution. Americans, by this view, were a
fringe society living in a remote region and
clearly out of step with the mainstream of European civilization in the eighteenth century.
Partly for this reason the British government had subscribed for most of the colonial
period, and especially during the Walpole era
(1715-1742), to a policy of salutary neglect. This
course of action (or inaction) had much to recommend it. Not only did it effectively separate a
wayward and dissident element from current
British political concerns, but it also kept administrative expenses low and avoided costly foreign
entanglements. Contrary to popular beliefs, British imperial expansion was hardly a deliberate or
formal process, especially in colonial times. Most
scholars agree that it was largely unintentional
and done on the cheap—that is, until the Seven
Years' War (1756-1763). What brought about
changes in a seemingly successful policy was,
first, a new sense of responsibility, stemming
from the Treaty of Paris (1763), for Canada and
all lands extending to the Mississippi River and,
second, an awareness that the North American
colonies were by far Britain's most significant
overseas interests. By 1750 their population
exceeded a million, and by the outbreak of the
Revolution the American economy had
HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N
A Privy Council; an
American political
cartoon presenting the
British government as a
committee of goats,
asses, and dogs, 1779
(Library of Congress,
Washington, D.C.)
235
expanded so rapidly that it was nearly 40 percent
the size of Great Britain's. Not surprising, this
dynamic growth aroused fears among British
officials that an economic rivalry might develop
between the colonies and the mother country.
Greater imperial regulation and an end to salutary neglect seemed the logical course, and conflict was never viewed as likely.
The minister most responsible for imposing
this new and more ambitious policy on the colonies was George Grenville, who succeeded Lord
Bute as First Lord of the Treasury in 1763. Grenville, an upright and dedicated administrator
with much experience in the House of Commons, had a keen desire to bring order to the
colonial system and induce a greater sense of
responsibility among the colonists for their own
support. Most troubling to him was a national
debt of nearly £140 million and the fact that the
Americans had contributed little in men, money,
or material in the recent conflict with the
French. While the French no longer appeared to
be a threat in North America, the Indians (some
of whom had allied with Britain's enemy)
remained a real concern, as evidenced by Ottawa
war chief Pontiac's rebellion (1763). Therefore,
to Grenville and his Parliamentary supporters,
drawing a demarcation line along the Allegheny
Mountains to prevent settlers from intruding
into Indian-held territories did not seem unreasonable. As a further safeguard, he intended to
station ten thousand troops in the region at a
cost of £350,000 per year.
To pay for this defense commitment was the
object of the Sugar Act (1764); it was also
designed to cover another loophole in the British imperial structure. Americans, perhaps coinciding with their freedom-loving proclivities,
were notorious smugglers, especially with the
Dutch and French. Recognizing that the Molasses Act (1733), which levied a duty of six pence
per barrel on sugar, was unenforceable, Parliament passed the 1764 act, which lowered the
duty to three pence and was enforced. Later it
was reduced to just one pence. Thus, any justification for illegal trafficking by the Americans
was removed. The world was hardly a free-trade
zone. Likewise, Parliament sought to curtail rampant smuggling by American merchants, who
had harmed the British effort during the French
and Indian War (1754-1763) by trading with the
enemy. To that end, the act gave governors the
right to issue writs of assistance (blanket search
warrants) and to try those convicted of smuggling in Vice-Admiralty Courts rather than in
civil courts, where the accused generally received
favorable decisions from sympathetic neighbors.
Americans also enjoyed paying their debts to
British traders in paper money (printed in the
colonies) that had fallen to less than its face
236
value. To prevent this devaluation of money, Parliament passed the Currency Act (1764), prohibiting Americans from printing their own paper
money. The following year Parliament passed the
Stamp Act, which required the purchase of government stamps with all paper articles—such as
newspapers, legal documents, and playing cards—
that were bought in the colonies. Given the fact
that Americans had shown little ability or willingness to defend themselves against the French
and Indians, that the money was going to be
used for their benefit, and that the tax burden of
the colonists was substantially less than that of
British taxpayers, the Stamp Act seemed a logical
step. Besides, stamps were normal in England.
Parliament also authorized the Quartering Act
(1765), which was designed to help offset the
cost of maintaining troops in America by obliging the colonies to provide them with suitable
accommodations and other basic necessities.
The King's ministers and members of Parliament were taken aback by the Americans'
response to these reforms. Riots, burnings of
officials' houses, and a boycott of British goods
hardly seemed an appropriate reaction to what
appeared in England to be reasonable measures.
Behind these sometimes violent protests, however, lay the American argument that the Stamp
Act was illegal because no previous Parliamentary measure had been designed solely for the
purpose of raising internal revenue. Grenville
was aware of such precedents with the Post
Office Act of 1710 and the Molasses Act. He
could also point to the fact that colonial assemblies in Massachusetts and New York had levied
stamp duties that were willingly paid by their
subjects. Furthermore, he estimated that revenues from his 1765 act would only pay for about
one-third of the cost of garrisoning British
troops in America. The remaining two-thirds
would have to be borne by British taxpayers. The
Americans, therefore, were acting more out of
emotion than reason. Most distressing was the
promulgation of the American "no taxation
without representation" doctrine by the Stamp
Act Congress in New York in October 1765. Few
Americans appreciated the fact that they were virtually represented in Parliament, almost as well
as their fellow subjects in Britain. Indeed, far
fewer Britons could vote in Parliamentary elections proportionately than Americans could vote
in colonial assembly elections. However quaint
virtual representation sounds to modern ears, it
was an accepted principle of aristocratic rule in
the eighteenth century. Again, America was out
of step with the times.
While Parliament acquiesced to colonial protests by repealing the Stamp Act under the ensuing Rockingham ministry, it affirmed the critical
concept of Britain's legislative supremacy over
H I S T O R Y IN D I S P U T E , V O L U M E 12: THE A M E R I C A N R E V O L U T I O N
the colonies with the passage of the Declaratory
Act (1766). This principle was soon questioned
with the duties on glass, lead, paper, paints, and
tea that were secured in 1767 by Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer under William Pitt the Elder. The Townshend duties were
intended to fund the salaries of governors and
other royal officials in the colonies, but they were
also regulatory trade taxes, not internal levies,
and thereby designed to test the distinction the
colonists had earlier made between the two concerning the Stamp Act. The colonists again failed
the test of logic. As an angry storm of protests
and boycotts reemerged, what kinds of taxes were
levied or for what reason no longer mattered.
Again, Parliament, under the Grafton ministry,
backed down by repealing Townshend's duties,
but the most lucrative duty on tea was retained as
a way of upholding the principle of Parliamentary supremacy.
By this time both sides, though not fully
conscious of the seriousness of the issues at
stake, were headed on a collision course. That
tempers did not flare more frequently may be
attributed to the separation of three thousand
miles of ocean and the relative lack of provocative actions by Parliament over the next several
years. The Boston Massacre (1770), of course,
was an exception and showed how quickly raw
emotions concerning British imperial policies
could surface. What it revealed was that Boston, with its ever-present mob, remained the
epicenter of radicalism and resentment of British authority, as it had been for more than a
century. This resistance was evident in the most
dramatic event that preceded the outbreak of
revolution—the Boston Tea Party (1773). It
was provoked by Parliament's passage of the
Tea Act (1773) that allowed the East India
Company to ship its tea directly from the Far
East to America, thereby resulting in substantial savings in transportation and duties from
not having to ship this cargo first to England
for reexport. It was a logical plan designed to
conciliate the colonists, but the Americans
reacted emotionally by disregarding the savings
argument and viewing the whole proposition
as a trick, or sugared pill, to entice them into
paying a tax that they had never approved.
Additionally, the plan threatened the powerful
American smuggling interests because it would
force dealers to sell their existing stock at a
loss. Instead of responding with peaceful protests or trying to establish a dialogue, a group
of American activists, disguised as Indians,
boarded East India Company ships in Boston
Harbor in December and destroyed 298 casks
of tea worth an estimated £11,000. This climactic event led directly to the closing of the port
of Boston, a restructuring of the Massachusetts
Charter, and a recall of troops from the wilderness. Thus, when Americans failed to respond
to the reasonableness of British Parliamentary
policies, the serious application of force
appeared to be the only answer.
This course of action, though not premeditated, was preceded and seemingly justified by
a long series of frustrations and misunderstandings in dealing with the fractious Americans,
who appeared to have little appreciation for the
liberties they enjoyed as British subjects. They
seemed determined to pursue their own separate ways as individual colonies and to avoid
imperial authority, a course made possible for
many decades by the relative leniency of colonial assemblies and the British policy of salutary neglect. When the King's ministers,
confronted with a new set of moral, fiscal, and
defense responsibilities after the French and
Indian War, attempted to reorganize and rationalize the imperial structure, the colonists
balked. By all standards of comparison, the
amount of cooperation (monetary and otherwise) that was expected of the Americans was
exceedingly small. Furthermore, the constitutional grounds for Parliamentary actions were
fully in keeping with precedent and more reasonable than those of Britain's foreign rivals.
For instance, North America never had a Viceroy. Nevertheless, freedom-loving Americans
had grown too accustomed to skirting British
authority and not bearing their fair share of
imperial responsibilities. In the end it became a
test of wills. Britain was unwilling to sacrifice
the principle of Parliamentary supremacy, the
bedrock on which its liberties were founded.
Americans acted more out of emotion, perceiving nothing but the worst possible motives
behind Parliamentary policies. Alas, while the
British appear to have swallowed their pride,
the myth of a Parliamentary conspiracy has persisted in America for more than two centuries.
-JOHN D. FAIR, GEORGIA COLLEGE
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