1765

1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, imposing a tax, effective November 1, on all printed materials purchased in the North American colonies (everything from licenses and newspapers to playing cards). Intended to raise revenue to help offset the cost of the French and Indian War and the continued maintenance of British military force in America, it was the first internal tax ever levied directly on the colonies by Parliament.

The Members of Parliament overwhelmingly supported the Act, passing it by a 205-49 vote in the House of Commons and unanimously in the House of Lords. While Parliament expected the colonists to object to the tax, it greatly underestimated how vehement the opposition was to be. Unlike the vast majority of his colleagues, Irish-born MP Colonel Isaac Barré, who had served in America, correctly anticipated the storm to follow. Declaring the American colonists to be “sons of liberty” (a name promptly adopted by the colonial opposition), Barré warned that the Americans were a people “as truly loyal as any subjects the king has, but a people jealous of their liberties and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated.”

The widespread colonial opposition that followed was not based on the nature or amount of the tax, but rather on the principle that setting their own taxes was a fundamental right of English people, and that free people may not be required to pay taxes by a legislature in which they have no representation. “No taxation without representation” became the rallying cry.

Less remembered but also disturbing to the colonists was the Act’s provision that violators were to be tried in admiralty courts, thus denying the accused a trial by jury—a provision included by Parliament in response to the fact that colonial juries often refused to convict persons accused of smuggling. George Washington declared that the divestiture of American courts’ jurisdiction made it “morally impossible” to obey the Act.

As mentioned in a Dose of a few days ago, the Stamp Tax was short-lived. Widespread protests and well-organized resistance in the colonies made collection infeasible and Parliament concluded that the tax simply wasn’t worth the cost of the escalating unrest. Four months after it went into effect, the Stamp Act was repealed. The principle underlying the dispute was, however, left unresolved and would eventually lead to revolution.